


here, there, and everywhere

by subtleanarchist



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Pining, Slow Burn, Supercorp endgame, as planning the wedding of a best friend you're in love with, because we all know: nothing on earth is as emotionally convoluted, in which Kara cries hard enough to just about fill a local community pool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:49:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 53,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26119075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtleanarchist/pseuds/subtleanarchist
Summary: ‘I’m gettingmarried,’Lena breathes emphatically, entreatingly, and her attention snaps to like a band pulled taut. She watches with increasingly disaffected pliancy as Lena seizes both her hands in one of her own and flashes her left at her, right under her nose. ‘Say something,’ Lena laughs, a little too breathless, a little too conscious. ‘You’re making me nervous.’Don’t,she thinks she could’ve said, and the vehemence of the very thought startles her.Why?is a little better, syntactically, in theory—less cruel, an open question, room for conversation.Really?is enthusiastic, breakwater, appropriate, adequate.‘Oh, god,’ she says instead.Or, alternatively:In which Lena announces her engagement, to everyone’s immense horror and Kara’s heartbroken disbelief, and everything that follows after.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 465
Kudos: 1103





	1. a case for a tragic optimism

**Author's Note:**

> one warm summer evening, my father, on a whim, brought out his old, worn, steel-string acoustic guitar from underneath the guest room bed, and plucked out fragments of the softest, loveliest, most achingly beautiful rendition of The Beatles' Here, There and Everywhere i've ever heard in my life. i was in tears by the end; it hasn't left my mind since. (also: _both of us thinking how good it can be; someone is speaking, but she doesn't know he's there,_ has got to be the most romantic bit of thinly veiled-longing in lyricism ever written, possibly ever.)
> 
> friends, i submit to you the meticulous, systematic dissection of Kara's infuriated breakdown over the events succeeding Lena's engagement, neatly wrapped in a slow burn multi-chapter: brace yourselves. weekly updates!
> 
> also, it's taken some four odd years, but, surreal as it is, it's finally finished. surprise, [Dea!](https://twitter.com/deaferrero) here's to nearly thrice as many years of friendship: this one's for you. x

‘I’m getting married,’ is what Lena says the afternoon she finally tells her, bottom lip between her teeth, eyes bright and sparkling with unshed tears. 

A drop of condensation from the glass in her hand drip-drips onto the velour surface of her couch. _Oh, no,_ she thinks belatedly, _the sofa. Oh, no,_ she thinks, _now,_ _it’s too warm to drink._

‘I’m getting _married,’_ Lena breathes emphatically, entreatingly, and her attention snaps to like a band pulled taut. She watches with increasingly disaffected pliancy as Lena seizes both her hands in one of her own and flashes her left at her, right under her nose. ‘Say something,’ Lena laughs, a little too breathless, a little too conscious. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

 _Don’t,_ she thinks she could’ve said, and the vehemence of the very thought startles her. _Why?_ is a little better, syntactically, in theory—less cruel, an open question, room for conversation. _Really?_ is enthusiastic, breakwater, appropriate, adequate. 

‘Oh,’ she finds herself saying instead, and throws her arms around Lena’s neck, mindful of the glass in her hand— _drip-drip—_ buries her face in her shoulder to avoid looking at her face. ‘Oh, um _—_ oh, god.’

The bridge of her glasses digs into her nose.

‘Oh, Lena,’ she says, and Lena clutches at her back almost desperately, laughing into her hair, nose pressed to her temple. 

‘This is so _crazy,’_ Lena laugh-cries, wiping at her eyes with her coat sleeves. ‘Isn’t this crazy?’ she clasps both of Kara’s hands tightly in her own, mindful of the glass clutched tightly in the other, and knocks their foreheads gently together. 

_Yes,_ she thinks. _Don’t._

 _Why?_ Lena grips her hands a little tighter, pressing a cheek to hers and regarding her ring with newfound fondness. _Really?_

‘Oh, god,’ she says instead. 

**. . .**

‘Why,’ Alex asks, around a mouthful of burrito, ‘are you so angry about this?’

Kara doubles back towards her, bearing down in disbelief. Her brows crumple together. ‘I’m not,’ she says angrily, and shoves the rest of her own chicken burrito into her mouth. ‘I’m not angry,’ she sweeps the litter off the table deliberately, crumples greasy wax paper and foil into tight, compact little balls. 

Nia shoots Alex a look before picking at the remains of her soggy fries. ‘I think it’s totally normal,’ she swipes a fry through a swath of ketchup, waves it thoughtfully. ‘Kara cares about her a lot, is protective. Your indignance—’ she shakes the fry at Kara; ketchup splatters the table ‘—is completely valid.’

Alex snorts, ‘It would be, if Kara didn’t think he was good enough for her.’

Kara smashes the foil into a sheet between her palms. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ she snaps, rounding on her. ‘Stop using my words against me!’

Alex throws her hands up, ‘You’re not _using_ any!’ 

‘I thought,’ Jess says, more than a little confused, ‘you were friends with him, too,’ she points her fork at Kara timidly. Her mushroom ravioli nearly slides off the tines. 

‘I am,’ Kara groans, exasperated. ‘That’s not the point! He isn’t the issue!’

Nia shakes the last of the fries off the greasy paper box and into her open mouth. ‘Then what is?’ she stops, mid-chew, and eyes the leftover ketchup packets on the table with regret. ‘Why are you so angry?’

‘Because,’ Kara exhales, a little shakily. ‘Because Lena—is getting married. _Married—_ has her whole life,’ she gestures frantically, ‘ahead of her, and is so young, and shouldn’t we be telling her to think this _through—?_ And with—’

‘Oh,’ Nia says under her breath, blinks, glances at Alex. _‘Oh._ Oh, no.’

Jess stabs at her ravioli with no small amount of spite, ‘This is the worst wedding committee I’ve ever been in.’ 

**. . .**

‘I think,’ Lena says, muffled through the heavy velvet curtain partition, ‘you’ll like this one better.’

Kara sags back against the cushions and swings her feet despondently. ‘I think you’d look great in anything,’ she mumbles. 

‘You’re sweet,’ Lena sticks a pale arm out, and the store-clerk slips a heft of material through the slit to her. ‘But I had this one made with you in mind, to match yours. Have you seen any of the designs I sent you?’

She thinks, absently, uncharacteristically, _a cigarette might help, for a change,_ and winces immediately in distaste at the rogue thought; she had nearly gone on a bender on the walk to the designer straight out of the bakery earlier that morning, paper bag in hand, clutching several rolls and half a dozen powdered doughnuts to her chest.

‘Kara?’ Lena prompts. The smartly-dressed lady by the dressing room shoots Kara a pointed, choleric little glare in apparent distaste, likely thinks she’s considering eating the contents of the floury paper bag in her arms. 

_Well, and good,_ Kara glares back, sticking a hand into the bag and fumbling for a raisin roll with indignant defiance.

‘Kara?’ Lena says, and then she steps out from behind the curtain, and Kara feels her breath filter out by the measure, in soft, stuttering little exhalations, fingers tight around what she thinks—vaguely—might be a powdered doughnut.

 _Oh,_ she thinks, and she knows—she _knows—_ has known for a while, has admitted it quietly to herself, in the dark of her own room, sifting through photos of their last weekend getaway together, but this: the sight of her, radiant as anything, nearly gliding across the floor towards her, lends itself a different, sobering sort of gravitas. 

_Oh,_ she thinks, and feels her eyes water traitorously. 

The moment lingers like a dream, hazy, and intoxicating, and fine, a paltry grace all on its own. She wishes she could take the shimmering gossamer threads trailing the near-visceral happiness pouring out of Lena— _Lena,_ who is looking up at her through her lashes more than a little shyly, color high in her cheeks; _Lena,_ who does a little spin on the tips of her toes for her appraisal, her dress ethereal in the soft afternoon glow—and coalesce this perfect, _perfect_ vision into something equally soft, and lovely, and tangible,and preserve it forever. 

(It’ll be all she can think of later, much later, when they ask her what it had been like, the first time she’d ever really fallen in love.)

‘Well,’ Lena ducks her head coyly, hands fluttering nervously about her waist. ‘What do you think?’

‘I have to go,’ she says instead, scrambling to her feet, and means it. Feels it, too—feels the air, thick in her throat; feels her head grow heavy, then light, pulse thundering in her temples; feels her chest, tight, tight, tighten. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispers, grasping Lena by the elbows briefly, blinking. ‘There’s an emergency, at work, something urgent came up, I have to—’

‘Of course,’ Lena murmurs lowly, face drawn, ever-gracious. ‘Of course, I’m sorry, can I call you a cab?’

‘No, no,’ Kara says, and forgets her floury paper bag on the ottoman altogether. ‘That’s okay, it isn’t too far.’ She presses a quick kiss to Lena’s cheek, ignores her soft snort of confusion and barely masked hurt. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’

‘I know,’ Lena says, none-too-sadly, drawing the hem of her gown up over her ankles. ‘I know. You’ll make it up to me.’

Then, all too soon, Kara’s flying out the door, parka trailing behind her, crying, ‘Absolutely, yes, I promise!’ 

She makes it four whole blocks, head held high, before dissolving into tears.

**. . .**

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Eve asks her the following afternoon.

She had offered to pick out centerpieces for the reception a week before, with Kara—before Lena had called her in tears the afternoon prior, before Kara had insisted on going anyway the same evening, nevermind her suspiciously stuffy nose, or her quiet sniffling. 

The very least she can do, she thinks, is pretend not to notice, which in itself would be an infinite kindness—beside her, Kara is attempting to perform what she must think is a particularly convincing impression of abject concentration. 

Nevermind that she’s spent the last six minutes examining a large crystal vase with a wide, ornate rim with equally wide, watery eyes, looking uncharacteristically bereft. 

She holds up a hand-blown glass pitcher for Kara’s appraisal, blinks as she startles. ‘What do you think of this one?’

Kara hardly glances at the thing, throat tight with remorse—‘Lena told you?’—but she takes the pitcher anyway, hefts it uneasily. 

‘Lena was,’ Eve purses her lips, runs a finger over a vibrant-neon crystal lily on the shelf in front of her. ‘Upset,’ she says eventually. ‘Very upset.’

Kara makes a soft, small noise in her throat, and Eve glances up at her sharply. ‘But, then, I figured, so were you. So, out with it, Danvers, before you ruin everything with your lukewarm enthusiasm.’

She lets Kara wring her hands in tense, agonizing silence for all of four equally agonizing minutes before steering her out the shop door. The quiet simmers between them, dense yet unobtrusive, trails them stubbornly all the way back to the car park.

‘You should tell her,’ Eve says, not unkindly. ‘I mean, probably.’

Kara hunkers down in the passenger seat beside her, shrinking into herself. ‘I don’t think so,’ she says after a while. ‘And I know you probably think I shouldn’t either.’

The freeway is blessedly clear for a Friday afternoon; Eve reaches for the console, fiddles awkwardly with the stereo until Sting croons softly into the static between them. ‘Look, I don’t really know, and don’t want to,’ she sniffs. ‘Who it is between them, for you, I mean. I know it’s—complicated. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’

Kara shoots her a grateful, watery smile; her lip trembles.

She downshifts to neutral by the intersection and sighs, deeply. Then, ‘I still have a couple of frozen chicken dinners you can bring home with you,’ and, ‘Do you eat rhubarb crumble?’

Kara exhales slowly, softly. A _Beatles_ song starts up in the background. 

‘Thanks, Eve,’ she says.

**. . .**

James corners her one morning, fresh off her ten o’clock coffee run, half-eaten danish still in hand. 

She shuffles into his office timidly, shifts and fidgets uneasily by the doorway in clear hesitation. ‘Breathe, Kara. You’re not in trouble,’ he says amusedly, nodding at her forgotten breakfast. 

‘Oh,’ she blinks, glancing down at her hand with genuine surprise. ‘Uh, thanks,’ she mumbles, and pushes the entire thing into her mouth in what she half-hopes is at least a manner remotely covert, if not passably polite. 

He waves her toward the chair in front of his desk. ‘Sit down, will you?’ he laughs, a loud, awkward bark. It sounds almost pained, and she blanches, rankled. ‘You and I,’ James says seriously, clearly uncomfortable. ‘We’ve been friends for a good, long while, right?’

Kara swallows, not without difficulty. ‘Sure,’ she hedges, wipes at the corner of her mouth with buttery fingertips. ‘Yeah, of course.’

He glances at her out of the corner of his eye, swiveling slowly in his chair. ‘And even when—even when we thought we could try being, you know, something more back then—’ he has the grace to look appropriately mortified, ignores Kara’s discomfited little squeak altogether at the memory, ‘—we could still, you know, at least _talk_ to each other about it.’

‘What is this even about?’ Kara frowns; she feels it well inside her: a brief, sharp burst of pure, uncomplicated resentment. ‘What are you getting at?’

The sheer audacity of his quick indignance in response—she thinks, not a little irate—is _comical_ , and ironical, and yet:

‘You’d tell me,’ James sets his teeth, jaw clenching. ‘You’d tell me if this bothers you, right? Me and Lena. If you weren’t okay with it.’

‘You’ve been together for years,’ Kara says incredulously. ‘What are you even getting at?’

 _‘We’ve_ been friends longer,’ a muscle tightens in James’ jaw, twitches along his temple when he grits his teeth. ‘You and me, I mean. And Lena told me about what happened at the fitting.’ 

Kara sighs, ashamed. A warm flush crawls up her throat. ‘Of course she would,’ she mumbles under her breath. James cocks a brow at her, offended. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says placatingly. ‘I’m sorry. There’s just a lot going on, and I never should’ve taken it out on either of you.’

James softens a mite, adequately mollified. He leans back in his chair, scratching beneath his chin with a pen self-consciously. ‘Something up with the family, you mean? Something personal?’ 

Kara looks up at him at that, her gaze flickering over his face. He shifts uneasily at the intensity of her glassy-eyed scrutiny. ‘Yeah,’ she concedes, glancing back at her knees. The tension dissipates. ‘Something personal,’ she shrugs deprecatingly.

**. . .**

‘The way I see it,’ Nia says, ‘the second you run out of gas, you’re screwed either way.’

They’re stretched out on opposite ends of the living room—Nia on the ottoman, nursing the last few mouthfuls of her warm, flat beer in a soup mug; Kara, lying back against the shag carpet, legs splayed out on the couch, and an elbow inside an empty pizza box. Littered between them is a veritable graveyard of beer bottles, strewn haphazardly all along the floor. 

Nia squints into her mug, hiccups tipsily with one eye screwed tightly closed. ‘Even if you make it as far as Liberty—and that’s a big, big, big _if—_ you’d be caught dead out on the freeway on the loop back, trying to make it back to Pine Bush on nothing but fumes. Also, what do you think this is?’ She turns the mug towards Kara, concerned. ‘A mosquito?’

‘Do you think she’s angry at me?’ Kara groans, turning over onto her stomach and pressing her face into the rug. ‘She won’t text me.’

‘Did _you_ text her?’ Nia rotates the mug in her hands briskly, sticks her nose against the rim in mounting panic. ‘Oh, my god, do you think it’s been there this whole time? Like, I’ve been drinking malaria without knowing, you think?’

‘No,’ Kara sighs, muffled by the carpet. ‘And no. I think I should talk to her,’ she says, lifting her head and planting her chin squarely against the rug. ‘I should do that right now.’ She scrambles to her feet blearily, stumbling into the ottoman and nearly knocking Nia flat on her back. ‘Have you seen my phone?’

‘Oh, god,’ Nia winces, fishing out the offending diver with the tip of her pinky. ‘God, that’s disgusting. Oof. God, what a mess,’ she reaches out with the same hand and, in an all too contrived effort to swipe the phone off Kara’s fumbling fingers, winds up smearing the unfortunate victim on the back of Kara’s sweatpants. ‘Ew. Oh, god, sorry. Also, bad idea, champ.’

‘Go away,’ Kara grumbles, batting her hand away from her bottom. The text itself takes all of a minute to draft _—_ even without the added difficulty of her abrupt clumsiness, and Nia pawing ineffectually at her arms _—_ and all too soon she’s sending it into the ether, free of further thought and consequence. She slides down against the ottoman, presses her face into Nia’s side with a groan.

‘Let the record show,’ Nia says reproachfully, eyeing her with pity, ‘I tried to talk you out of it, because, hello, sobriety: read, a startling lack of.’

‘Duly noted,’ Kara snorts, shifting onto her knees to promptly face-plant onto the rug. She lifts her head briefly to rub her cheek up against its gritty surface, fists pressed to her stomach beneath her. ‘I think I drank too much,’ she declares resignedly. ‘I may very well die.’

‘I think so, too,’ Nia whispers fretfully. ‘But, like, me, not you. Did you see the size of that _thing?_ People die of malaria all the time.’

**. . .**

Lena shows up to Game Night the following evening, amidst furious speculation of her continual affront.

Alex relieves her of several bags of Moroccan take-out at the kitchen and punts her none-too-gently towards the living room to mingle. She takes a seat next to Kara _—_ to everyone’s ill-disguised surprise _—_ and folds her into a brief hug.

‘Hey,’ Kara croaks, rocking her back belatedly in growing relief. ‘I’m so glad you made it.’

‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ Lena grins, pressing a quick kiss to the corner of her mouth. She makes quick work of Winn’s feeble alibis in a round of Clue, and dismantles all attempts on Nia’s end to ensnare her in Mouse Trap before James finally arrives, two hours late and burdened with several cases of beer.

‘Finally,’ Winn grumbles, shifting to make room on the sofa. ‘It’s time we, The Last of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth, band together and end Lena’s tyrannical display of power.’ 

James squeezes himself unceremoniously between Winn and Lena and slings an arm around her shoulders. ‘So nice of you to make the time,’ Lena teases, pressing a kiss to his cheek. 

‘Would you believe me if I told you I was only a victim of gridlock?’ he grins. He spots Kara’s awkward, half-hearted attempt to sidle towards the opposite end of the sofa to make room for him and leans over Lena’s lap to wrap her into a hug. 

‘Oh,’ Kara squeaks, caught out and red-faced. She tries to free an arm out from under him, and winds up patting his back gingerly. ‘Glad you made it!’ 

‘Like I’d pass up on the chance to see my favorite girls,’ he laughs good-naturedly, clapping her hard on the shoulder. 

They plow through several rounds of Telestrations and a quick game of Old Maid before they run out of take-out to pick at, two of James’ beer cases a lonely, empty testament to the evening. 

‘Won’t take a second,’ Alex calls, leaping to her feet and sweeping into the kitchen to make a call to the diner down the block. 

‘I could run down and pick it up,’ Kara offers, calling after her. ‘Save them the trouble?’

‘Actually, Kara,’ Lena says, and Kara very nearly misses the look that passes between her and James, a split-second acquiescence on either end, ‘d’you want to get a drink with me?’

‘What, here?’ Kara glances at James dumbly, feels it well inside her all at once _—_ white-hot and familiar _—_ the selfsame, uncomplicated brand of shame and rancor: only, now, directed at them both, deep and distinct. 

It must pass briefly over her face, much to her chagrin, because Lena visibly blanches, and James rocks onto his heels and stands, more than a little stiffly. 

‘Great idea,’ he says brightly. ‘I’ll pour you girls a little something.’ He catches a startled Winn by the elbow and steers them both into the kitchen. 

‘What is this about?’ Kara laughs, a dry, exasperated rasp, far too strained to sound sincere. ‘How did we get here?’ she flings a hand carelessly, irate, ‘where you both start ganging up on me?’

‘It isn’t like that,’ Lena says calmly, reaching for her hand. She exhales quietly in relief when no reproach appears forthcoming, and slips her fingers into Kara’s palm. ‘When you texted me the other day that you missed me, I realized we had to talk. Because I missed you, and I didn’t like feeling like I’d done you wrong without knowing what I did, exactly.’

She lets Lena pull her off the couch and into the balcony, hardly notices James slipping in quickly to hand them both tumblers, two fingers full, before disappearing. 

Lena moves closer to her, close enough that she can just about isolate the soft, heady notes of her perfume at the curve of her neck; close enough that they could but touch, and she wants to—wants to seal the space between them, between their arms, between their mouths _—_ and, this time, the thought no longer startles her.

And, then, to her surprise, Lena does: Lena slips into her arms, curling close about her, nose pressed to her neck. She shifts forward reflexively, barely managing to suppress a delighted little shiver at the feel of her breath, cold and warm all at once _—_ the inhale, the exhale _—_ soft against her throat.

‘I thought I’d made you mad,’ Lena whispers against her skin. ‘I thought I’d upset you, and I was hurt, and a little angry, that you left the way you did. And, I missed you,’ she curls her arm around the back of Kara’s shoulder, shifts to press her face to her collar instead. She makes a soft, gratified little noise in her throat when Kara pulls her closer, nosing into her hair with growing tenderness. 

‘James told me you talked to him,’ she says, and Kara’s eyes flutter open in quiet resignation, the last dregs of elation dissipating in the breaths between them. ‘And I can’t believe how _awful_ I’d been to you, throwing all this wedding crap at you, when you’ve been dealing with something just as big and personal all on your own.’ 

If it weren’t so utterly frustrating, Kara thinks, it’d be comical _—_ but as it stands, it isn’t. It well and truly isn’t, and just about then, she feels it: an abrupt, wholly ludicrous desire to cry. 

And so she does—in soft, stuttering little sobs she was all too ashamed of, even as Lena pulled back in downright bewilderment. 

‘Oh,’ Lena whispers, confused, and terrified, and concerned. ‘Oh, Kara,’ she reaches up to cradle her face gently, carefully, startles back when Kara only cries harder at her touch. 

‘I’m sorry,’ Kara gasps, in a Herculean effort to compose herself. ‘I’m so sorry, it isn’t your fault. It’s not your fault,’ she pulls away to wipe at her face with the sleeves of her cardigan. 

The balcony door slides open, and Alex and Nia tumble out wearing varying expressions of mingled pity and concern. 

‘Oof,’ Nia says.

‘Oh, man,’ Alex mumbles. 

‘There’s just a lot to deal with,’ Kara says reasonably, sounding far more collected and just the least bit congested. She throws her arms around Lena’s shoulders and pulls her into a tight hug to save her the trouble of examining her face. ‘But we’re okay. We are _so_ okay,’ she says. ‘I’m okay.’

‘Okay,’ Lena whispers, not sounding convinced in the least. She catches Alex’s eye from behind Kara and shoots her a look of absolute perplexity. 

‘How soon is that calzone getting here?’ Kara asks, pushing her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. Lena slips an arm around her waist to steady her, and she leans into the touch. 

Nia snorts. ‘Not soon enough, I think.’

‘Man, I could eat three,’ Kara laughs, scrubbing at her face briskly with the cuff of her pastel blue cardigan. ‘I’m okay,’ she says to Alex, stopping her from reaching out towards her with a hand and a rather severe telling-look that Lena, thankfully, misses in its entirety. 

‘If you’re sure,’ Alex says slowly, glancing at Nia with concern. ‘I mean, I could take you home?’

Kara shoots her a piercing, wide-eyed glare, lips tightening with fleeting panic. ‘No, no,’ she says, grinning wildly back at Lena, hands waving frantically. ‘I’m fine. I’m _starving!_ Definitely waiting on those, uh, calzones. Yep. I’m hungry. Aren’t you hungry?’ she asks Nia, stepping past her towards the living room. 

‘She’s fine,’ Nia says to Lena consolingly. ‘I promise.’

They watch Kara putter around the living room, stacking cans of beer into her arms, only sniffling on occasion. James hands her a gin-and-tonic from the kitchen, and she takes it with two hands, cans under her arms, grinning gratefully. 

‘Okay,’ Lena relents. She folds her arms, brows drawing tight. Her jaw tenses. ‘Okay.’


	2. where all past years are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lena manages to suss some things out, Alex delivers a crushing truth, and James finally confronts Kara.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Absolutely blown away by all the love and feedback for the last chapter! You’re all so wonderful, and so amazing, I can’t thank you enough. x

It takes a fair bit of convincing on Alex’s end, but after several discreet, furious phone calls, and an impromptu dinner date that ended with both of them whisper-screaming at each other on the rooftop bar of the Shangri-La, Lena is _—_ accordingly, sufficiently _—aptly_ convinced that Kara’s state of distress was over Eliza’s (none-too-recent) diabetic diagnosis. 

So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when the call inevitably came through, even if it was over two weeks off the mark. And it certainly wasn’t unreasonable to hesitate to answer it, with no small amount of trepidation, on either sister’s end. 

It’s Kara who draws the short end of the stick after a particularly violent, albeit brief, tussle over the incessant ringing; who finally picks the phone up gingerly, by the tips of her fingers, rubbing at her temple with the other hand, where Alex had chucked the remote at it. 

‘Hi, Eliza,’ she says innocently. 

‘Do I want to know,’ Eliza starts, dangerously quiet. ‘Why darling Lena’s left me more than half a dozen messages, asking if I’d let her, please, pay for my insulin?’ 

‘It was all Alex’s fault,’ Kara cries suddenly, dodging a cushion and a shoe aimed at her head in quick succession. ‘She couldn’t think of anything to throw Lena off, so she told her you were diabetic _—_ ’

‘Make her tell you why I had to, mom!’ Alex yells, leaping off the sofa and barreling right into the wall Kara had been leaning against, just barely managing to seize her around the waist as she fled to the kitchen, squealing. ‘Make her tell you how she cried like a _bitch_ when Lena told her she’d be getting married!’ 

‘Lena’s getting married?’ Eliza says loudly, sounding thoroughly astonished. ‘To _James?’_

There’s a scuffle on their end as Alex finally manages to throw Kara over her shoulder amidst loud protest. ‘I panicked,’ Alex says into the phone, wincing as Kara pummels her back with her fists, legs nearly smacking her in the face. ‘She wanted to know why Kara was being such a mess about the whole thing, so I _—_ ’ 

‘Told her about your mother’s diabetes from the early-2000s?’ Eliza asks wryly. 

‘Okay, to be fair,’ Alex huffs, grunting as she tosses a squealing Kara onto the sofa. ‘I didn’t exactly tell her you’ve had it a while?’ 

‘Let me talk to her for a bit,’ Eliza sighs. Alex thumbs to speaker and shoves the phone into Kara’s reluctant hands. ‘Kara,’ she says, very gently, and it surprises even Alex _—_ and amuses her, admittedly, although she knows full well it shouldn’t _—_ how quickly tears well in Kara’s eyes in response, despite having spent the last thirty seconds glaring up at Alex with her arms crossed. 

‘Sorry,’ Kara whispers, wiping clumsily at her face with the backs of her hands. 

‘Oh, honey,’ Eliza says softly. ‘Why are you sorry? Alex, sorry, can you _—_?’ she asks, distressed.

‘Okay,’ Alex says, reaching down to thumb the speaker off and ushering Kara off the couch. ‘Okay, go, go, go,’ she says, squeezing her head into a quick, tight hug and shunting her off towards the bedroom. ‘Mom,’ she yells, leaning down and cupping her hand over her mouth. ‘Sending you off with Kara.’ 

She dithers idly in the kitchen for over an hour, pulling the stoppers off a fair few bottles of scotch to sniff at and debating the merits of Lean Cuisine in front of an open fridge. She’s halfway through her second hot pocket, and a third glass of bourbon generously diluted in what can only be Kara’s share of Capri Sun, when Kara finally emerges from the bedroom, clutching the phone to her chest, tear-flushed and red-rimmed. 

There’s a sad, defeated little slouch to her shoulders, her mouth turned down at the corners. They sit in silence for over fifteen minutes for lunch, Kara poking dejectedly at a helping of microwavable orange chicken, before Alex puts her glass down and kicks her under the table.

_‘What—?’_ Kara gasps angrily, grasping at her shin. 

‘I have to say it,’ Alex says, looking at her steadily. She flicks the ball of crumpled wrapper across the table at her. ‘I have to say it, because no one else might. And I love you.’ 

All the vim and vigor inflating her in indignation seems to escape Kara at that, and she resumes picking at her chicken, abashed. ‘I know,’ she starts to say, but Alex nudges her leg with her foot, gently. 

‘No, I don’t think you do,’ Alex says, and Kara feels her eyes water, impossibly, for what seems like a downright superlative in count today alone. _‘I_ know,’ Alex says lowly, reaching over to top off her own glass and pushing it across the table towards her. ‘I _know._ And maybe in another life, Kara. But,’ and here, Kara looks up, startled at the turn. ‘But, not in this one. And you know it.’

There’s a pause at that, one that stretches remarkably long, to Alex’s growing unease. ‘You’re telling me,’ Kara says, slowly, trying in vain to fight the shock from bleeding into her tone and failing miserably. ‘You’re telling me I shouldn’t tell her _—_ how I feel about her?’

‘What good would it do?’ Alex asks seriously. ‘What good would it do, if you do?’

Kara draws back, eyes wide with disbelief. ‘What good?’ she says incredulously. ‘I wouldn’t be lying to her,’ her brows crease together in consternation. ‘I wouldn’t be keeping it from her; I’d be honest, for a change!’

‘To what end?’ Alex presses anxiously, leaning forward in earnest. ‘What would it even achieve? A settlement? Of dues you think you’re owed? That _she_ is? That you think you’re _both_ entitled to?’

Kara feels her color rising, her growing fury tempered only by the sharp sting of unadulterated bewilderment. ‘Because if I never say anything,’ she hedges, trembling from the effort of keeping her temper in check. ‘Then I’ll never be able to, ever again.’

‘Then you should’ve said something,’ Alex sighs, clearly frustrated. ‘Long before it ever got to this point. You should’ve said something. Now, it’s already too late, and you know it.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Kara cries, pushing her chair back forcefully. ‘Why are you being like this? You’re supposed to tell me to be honest, to stand by what I feel!’

Alex stands, just as briskly. ‘Because I don’t know what you want to do,’ she says evenly. ‘Because I don’t think even _you_ do. You want to, what, suddenly burden her with the pressure of everything _you’re_ feeling? Right before _her_ wedding?And expect her to, what, reciprocate?’

‘Of course not,’ Kara snaps. ‘She just has to _know,’_ she says. ‘I don’t know how she’d take it, she just has to hear it!’

‘To what _end?’_ Alex says loudly, shoving back against the table with a hip. The bourbon splashes over the rim of her glass. ‘You can’t even answer me right, because you don’t know either, do you? You want peace of mind, at her expense! What good would it do, you telling her? What do you even think it’ll _do_ to her? Stop and think, Kara,’ she says pleadingly. ‘For god’s sake, stop and think a minute.’

They stand like that for a breather, exhaling harshly through their noses _—_ winded from the abrupt vehemence of so petty a spat. ‘You don’t know that,’ Kara says, eventually. ‘You don’t know that she’s made up her mind about this _—_ thing, with James.’

‘Neither do you,’ Alex sighs. ‘And I know it isn’t too bad to, you know, hope, but—you know her, better than anyone. I mean, would she ever have said yes if she hadn’t?’

‘I just want her to be happy,’ Kara says, and the tears come, ineluctably, hot, and fast, and furious. ‘Is it so bad to think that she could be, maybe, with me?’

‘Of course not,’ Alex says soothingly, rounding the table to lay a conciliatory hand on her shoulder. ‘Of course not.’

**. . .**

One Saturday afternoon finds her and an overly-enthused Jess in Sam’s flat, sifting half-heartedly through dull, pastel-colored palettes and swatches. ‘Maybe,’ Sam muses aloud after Kara finishes griping at her under her breath about finding out Lena had paid for Eliza’s prescriptions for the next three years, ‘maybe she thinks she’s being helpful—like, a comfort to you, with the whole Eliza thing.’

Kara kicks her furtively from her perch—hard enough to make her wince—cutting glances over at a thankfully still-clueless Jess, who was deeply engrossed in a separate portfolio. ‘I’m serious,’ Sam scowls, chucking a throw pillow at her head in retaliation. ‘She always gets way too clingy when she starts overcompensating.’

‘Or when she’s scared,’ Jess offers absently, squinting down at the photos in her hands. Kara turns to look at her in surprise; Jess lifts her head briefly to look at her square in the eye. ‘She’s scared she’s losing you. You’ve been avoiding her these past few weeks.’

‘I haven’t!’ Kara squeaks, flushing darkly. ‘I haven’t been! Does she think that? Does it look like I am? Is it obvious?’

Sam slings another pillow at her head. ‘You aren’t exactly the poster child for subtlety, Danvers,’ she snorts. ‘You should hear her tell it, when it’s just us girls. Just the other week, she got drunk enough to actually ask if it’d be a good idea to postpone,all because you wouldn’t reply to any of her texts about catering recommendations. You should’ve seen James’ face. _’_

‘I—I had a deadline that day! T-the whole day! Why can’t I ever catch a break?’ Kara cries, throwing her hands up. She flips onto her side and burrows her face into the cushions. 

‘God, I told you,’ Jess says to Sam dryly, fighting to be heard over Kara’s embarrassingly loud, mortified groaning. ‘Same thing Nia learned the hard way. Lena isn’t going to let this go. And neither is James, since she tells him everything anyway.’

‘Oh, fuck James,’ Kara mumbles into the pillows, to Sam and Jess’ amusement. She flops onto her back with a grunt, drawing her legs up like a belly-up possum. ‘He’s been waiting for the perfect opportunity to rip me a new one ever since that trip to Carmel. I mean, it’s not like I wanted her to cry!’ 

‘It got you to come,’ Sam laughs. 

Jess sets the portfolio down and eyes Kara with newfound curiosity. ‘I don’t get it,’ she says, and Kara shifts a little further down to look at her. ‘Why don’t you just tell her you don't want him for her?’ 

‘Because what good would it do?’ Kara sighs, rocking up to fish for her phone in her back pocket. ‘It’s too late to say anything.’

‘But not too late to be a complete and utter bitch about it, apparently,’ Sam snickers. Kara shoots her a tired, dirty glare before fumbling reluctantly with her phone. 

‘Oh, god,’ Kara mutters, sitting bolt upright with a groan. ‘Oh, god.’ Sam scoots closer excitedly, propping her chin up on Kara’s knee to peer closer at her phone. ‘Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god, oh, _god.’_

There’s a dull, muted thump as Jess sends her sample swatches flying across the floor in barely concealed aggravation. ‘What?’ she hisses. ‘What is it this time?’

‘Speak of the devil,’ Sam cackles, clutching her sides, even as Kara wrestles her irritably to the floor. 

Her phone clatters along the parquet flooring, and Jess scoops it up in a pinch. _‘Kara,’_ she reads aloud, _‘We need to talk, urgent. Please.’_ She looks up at Kara at that and fights off an exasperated grin in sympathy. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, over Kara’s loud, cross iterations in clear warning—‘ _I don’t want to hear it, don’t you dare!’_ —‘He sounds pretty serious, Kara.’

Kara relaxes her chokehold on Sam and slackens with a ragged sigh. Anxiety blooms across her features, then, fervent, and pained, and earnest, and the laughter caught in Sam’s throat all but stutters out. 

‘Kara,’ she says softly, crouching beside her to touch her arm. She pauses, even as Kara begins to curl in on herself, a frown settling deeply over her features. ‘Suck it up,’ she says firmly, grasping her shoulder to give her a sympathetic little shake. ‘You’ll have to get it out of the way eventually, one way or another. Might as well get it all over with now. And, you know, for,’ and here her eyes grew soft and kind, ‘for Lena.’

A little shudder ripples through Kara then, her eyes drawing closed briefly in an effort to compose herself. The silence is broken by a fresh burst of sound: her phone rattles to life, trilling and vibrating insistently in her hand, once, twice, and she swallows a fresh wave of fear and irritation at the feel of it.

She thinks she nearly drifts off, dissociating at all the heavy-handed contemplation, and might have, likely, until Jess clears her throat gently. Her eyes open slowly, reluctantly, and she turns her gaze up to meet theirs, expectant and wary in their turn.

‘Damn it,’ she sighs, thumbing at the screen in resignation. ‘Hi, James,’ she says, and grimaces as the muffled, grainy tone on the other end rises in response.

**. . .**

If the barman is fazed by the growing amount of litter piling up in front of her, he keeps it to himself. All the same, every once in a while, he drifts back to her—to palm her wrappers into the bin, to top her tumbler off with another finger or two at her request.

By the time James comes over to take the seat next to her, more than an hour late, she’s had well over a near half-quart in whiskey sours. ‘Hi,’ she cries, leaping up to kiss him sloppily on the cheek, her glasses askew. ‘Hope you don’t mind, I got a head start,’ she laughs, tucking enthusiastically into a second roll of fruit chews.

‘I can see that,’ James grimaces, glancing at the empty wrappers beside her glass. ‘It’s fine. I’m sorry, I got held up at work.’

‘Don’t we all?’ Kara nods mock-sagely. Together, they glance down at the torn trappings of the roll by her glass. ‘Starburst?’ she offers absently, sorting through her pile with a finger. 

He watches as she starts unwrapping a handful of dainty pink-colored squares, depositing them from a height almost clumsily into a chipped tea plate by her elbow. ‘I’m, uh, good, I think,’ he mumbles, his nose wrinkling unconsciously when she shrugs, popping them into her mouth three at a time. 

‘So,’ Kara manages after a minute or two, wiping her hands against her slacks with synthetic vigor. ‘Let’s get to it. Come to yell at me?’ 

He frowns at that, unsettled by her indifference. ‘Of course not,’ he scoffs. ‘I just,’ he rubs at his chin, suddenly grim. ‘I wanted to talk.’

She looks at him then, long and appraisingly, and he very nearly flinches under her attention; all of a sudden, she turns back to the bar and tosses the last of her drink back. ‘Yep, right, okay, _yes,’_ she snorts in amusement, gesturing along the length of the counter at the bartender for another. ‘Yes, let’s talk.’ 

Sometime later, when they’re both halfway through to well and truly pissed—stiff, insufferable little silences wholly traded in for full-bellied laughter; banter crude, and raucous, and gauche—she hears him ask (to her ears, seemingly through a pipe): ‘Do you hate me, Kara?’

It startles her to sobriety in a blink, and she blinks, in turn, at his sheer _cheek,_ but: ‘No,’ she says, and means it, even as the color rises high along her throat. ‘No, James,’ she says, a little firmer, and the sincerity on her face must console him, after a fashion, because he exhales audibly.

‘You’re sure?’ he teases, only a trifle probing. She sees uncertainty flicker briefly in his eyes and feels her stomach twist in response. ‘That’s—that’s a relief, let me tell you,’ he laughs, genuinely assuaged at her encouraging nod. ‘We, Lena and I, well, I mean,’ his seat creaks when he shifts, cheeks flushing darkly. ‘We thought you were, you know—upset. At us.’

Her stomach gives an almighty lurch at the prospect of Lena dwelling on her airs fitfully over the past few weeks, thoroughly distressed at her reception. 

It had startled her something awful when Lena had suddenly burst into tears the day before they’d left for Carmel nearly over a month ago—great, gulping sobs against Kara’s shoulder, arms wrapped tightly around her—when she’d gone up to her best friend’s penthouse suite and tried, very gently, to decline her invitation to join Lena’s bid to bond with her bridesmaids. 

Lena, already red-faced and thoroughly saturated with bourbon and tonic water, had all but thrown herself at her at that, and she had only just managed to fling an arm out to brace them against the back of the sofa before Lena had started to cry, completely undeterred in her comically single-minded attempt to climb Kara like a tree. 

‘Then we don’t have to go,’ Lena had said tearfully, face pressed into the slope of her neck, her arms tightening around her shoulders as Kara tried to ease her legs off their death-grip around her waist. ‘I can tell them something came up, and we can—we can stay in, together, and order in, and put on some Disney and make it a girls’ night, just us two, like we used to.’

‘Lena,’ she’d whispered, patting her back consolingly; any attempt on her end to disengage Lena’s koala-hold had been utterly futile. ‘You can’t call it off a day before, Eve and Kelly filed for leaves a month in advance.’

A soft, little gulp against her chest made her snort in fond amusement—Lena had worked herself up into a particularly aggressive bout of the hiccups. ‘But, I want you there,’ she’d sniffled, cheek pressed to her shoulder. 

Her nose was warm where it touched Kara’s neck. ‘I don’t want to go if you aren’t there. I planned this whole thing to spend more time with _you_. I don’t want to lose you, Kara,’ she’d started sobbing anew, legs tightening around Kara’s waist at the prospect. ‘I don’t want you to hate me. I don’t want us to _fight.’_

‘We’re not fighting!’ Kara had yelped, wrapping her up in a hug fierce enough to squeeze the breath out of her. ‘And I don’t hate you, Lena. I could never hate you,’ she’d drawn back to look her in the eye, knocked their foreheads together gently. Lena’s bottom lip trembled between her teeth. 

‘I’m sorry,’ she’d whispered, and Lena had shuddered against her. ‘I’m so sorry, I just—sometimes, it’s hard to remember I’m—I’m going to lose _you.’_ Lena had looked at her askance, then, and she backpedaled hard enough to give them both whiplash. ‘Like, this, our girls’ trips out, I mean, among other things—’ Lena squints at her, and she feels herself start to sweat under the scrutiny. ‘Like, uh, like, the thing with Eliza, also, the, uh, the diabetes, and—’

Lena had regarded her then, so tenderly, it had nearly broken Kara’s heart. She cradled her face with a hand and pressed the tip of her nose rather wetly to Kara’s cheek, her eyes fluttering closed. ‘Kara,’ she’d said, softly. ‘What are you _talking_ about? You could never lose me. You would never.’ 

Kara had buried her face in Lena’s hair at that, her own eyes filling rapidly to her displeasure. ‘Is that what this is about?’ she’d asked, pulling back to look her over, bright green eyes alight with fresh hope. ‘Is that what you were afraid of, all this time?’

It would’ve been—she thinks, in hindsight—such a simple matter then, to have closed the distance between them; to have taken Lena’s face in her hands and kissed her, felt her mouth soft and warm, yielding against hers; to have swallowed her gasp in a heartbeat, pulled her tighter against her. 

But, she hadn’t. 

She hadn’t, and James had come in to find them like that eventually, keycard in hand, and the moment had gone. Lena gave such a start in her arms at the sight of him standing in her living room that Kara had dropped her, her own arms falling from Kara’s shoulders in surprise. 

James had frowned at her for a beat, and then at Kara, brows drawing together in confusion. ‘Are you crying?’ he’d asked cautiously, reaching for her. 

‘I’ll go!’ Kara had cried, shoving her glasses back up the bridge of her nose, face flushed the color of puce. Lena had turned to look at her, eyes wide with hope and clear disbelief. ‘I’ll go, uh, with you, and the rest of the gang. To Carmel,’ she gave a weak, cheerful swing of the arm at the name. ‘I’ll, um. I’ll pack my things.’

Lena hadn’t given any indication she’d wanted to discuss the point any further since then, and to have brought it up herself at any given time afterward would’ve been wholly inappropriate, given the circumstances. 

The moment had faded altogether, and any hope—the faintest notion—of a quiet confession, along with it.

‘I’m not,’ she says sincerely, drifting back into the present. Her gaze slides out of focus for a breath, and he watches raptly as she swigs back a fortifying mouthful. ‘You two—you two are something else,’ she finds herself saying, patting him on the arm. ‘All these years together, it’s incredible.’ 

The barman tops her off at a gesture, and she watches the drink as it swills in her glass. ‘You make her happy,’ she says, very softly. 

James coughs uncomfortably, fiddles with his wristwatch as she knocks back another finger with well-practiced ease. ‘Thanks,’ he says, tugging on his cuffs. ‘Thank you, I—she’s just so worried about you. About how you’re taking this whole thing. Worried you might be feeling left out, or neglected—’

The glass must nearly crack, despite its heft, when she slams it carelessly onto the bar-top; more than a few heads turn to look at them at the sound, and the barman shoots her a glare in warning. ‘It has nothing to do with you,’ Kara says calmly. ‘I don’t want us biting each other’s heads off about this anymore. Whatever’s going on with me has nothing to do with you.’

‘Then tell her that!’ James groans. He slaps a hand onto his thigh in consternation. ‘Tell her that yourself! I get tired, too, Kara—there’s so much I have to see to; I could do with a breather on your end, too.’

They sit in silence for half an hour longer, taking small, modest pulls off a bottle of craft beer apiece. At a quarter past midnight, James’ phone rattles noisily on the countertop, and they glance at it involuntarily. ‘Lena,’ he grunts, squinting down at the screen. ‘Probably wondering where I am.’

Resentment twists inside her at the prospect, white-hot and heavy between her ribs. She thinks she draws her breath out a little louder, a little harsher than normal, because he glances warily up at her at the sound. 

She feels it, feels her head growing lighter by the minute, the faint buzz between her ears. A timid little burp worms its way up her throat, and she tastes the sting of acid, and the acrid, bitter tang of the alcohol on her tongue. 

‘Have you ever felt that, for yourself?’ she asks suddenly. Her voice drops, low and impossibly soft. ‘Do you know what it feels like, to want something you can’t have?’

He turns to regard her intently, his phone rumbling soundlessly in a loose palm, all but forgotten. ‘Sure,’ he sniffs. ‘Haven’t we all?’

She knocks her heels up against the rail-guard on her stool, legs swinging restlessly beneath her. Her eyes close for a beat, right before they fill, spill over.

When she opens them again, James is staring at her, unblinkingly, the corners of his mouth set into a tight grimace. ‘Kara,’ he starts to say, easing backward cautiously. ‘You know I—we can’t.’

He flinches, visibly, when she laughs in his face in clear surprise.

‘Oh, my god,’ she gasps, doubling over; she feels it, the first vestiges of hysteria simmering on the heels of her tears. ‘Oh, my god,’ she looks up at him, then, features twisted in open derision. 

She must look a fright, she thinks; a tear slides down her face, and then another, ‘It—this has nothing to do with you, James. _Nothing._ God. _God.’_ She chokes back another appalled, croaking laugh, swallows the sob that threatens to tumble after it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he breathes, ashamed. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t—I wasn’t implying—I’m sorry.’

It takes all of a second to sweep the last half of her candy roll into the pocket of her parka, and another to toss a few bills onto the counter. 

‘I’m sorry, too,’ she says, and leaves him staring after her in open-mouthed bemusement. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Three: In which Lena’s other bridesmaids throw the raunchiest, bawdiest, most ribald pre-bachelorette in existence, to Kara’s mortified exasperation. 
> 
> You do _not_ want to miss the next chapter, friends, trust _(wink, wink, nudge, nudge)—_ stay tuned! 
> 
> Drop me a line below, and come say hi at [tumblr](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/)/[twitter!](https://twitter.com/subtleanarchist) Please let me know what you thought! Have a great week ahead! x


	3. the very thought of you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lena’s bridesmaids throw the raunchiest, bawdiest, most ribald pre-bachelorette in existence, and Kara discovers a surprising secret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man, you lot are something else! thank you, thank you, thank you, all my love, always. sending everyone an extra, breathlessly tight hug after last week’s godawful cwsg crew-Twitter fiasco. x
> 
> also, side-note, while [Bowlly & Noble’s version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJdipZ4_lpc) is lovely, it’s King Cole’s excruciatingly beautiful rendition of [‘The Very Thought of You’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcRQiNHrsoQ) that draws a small wistful tear out of you at the most inopportune times—Kara, i’m sure, would agree. 
> 
> (bonus: it was either Bowlly & Cole, or Ella Fitzgerald’s [‘The Nearness of You’ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W36h1RQ11fQ)for this chapter.)
> 
> gears start to turn, things pick up speed: hang onto your trousers this chapter, friends. x

‘This isn’t my fault,’ Eve yells, fighting to be heard over the bass. ‘It was Sam and Kelly’s idea!’

Kara blinks, and blinks, and blinks until the neon blue strips lining the edges of the handrails on the narrow staircase come into focus in the debilitating darkness. Things nearly take a turn when she misses a step on the way down and stumbles right into Eve, sending them headlong into the landing with a grunt. 

‘Sorry,’ Kara mumbles, fumbling for her glasses on the floor. Her fingers come away appallingly sticky, and Eve wrinkles her nose as she wipes them on the back of her slacks in dismay. ‘Listen,’ she ventures, squinting against the glare of the violently neon pink spotlights spiraling overhead. ‘I—’

‘Don’t you dare,’ Eve growls, poking her squarely in the chest. ‘Whatever it is, save it. She’s been waiting all night for you to show up, and I literally waited an hour for you: outside. _No coat._ So suck it up, and get in there.’

Eve all but shoves her through the sequined curtain partition and she only just manages to gain her balance before she’s blasted in the face with a glitter bomb. ‘Oh, my god!’ Nia squeals in her ear, nearly crying from laughter. ‘Sorry, that was so hard! I didn’t know it’d go off like that!’ 

She feels Eve seize an elbow, and Nia the other, until one way or another, they manage to steer her through the writhing mass of bodies and into Lena’s lap. 

‘Kara!’ she hears Lena gasp, and all of a sudden she finds herself spluttering incoherently around a mouthful of Lena’s hair, arms wrapped tightly around her waist. ‘Oh, my god, you’re here!’ 

‘Yep,’ Kara laughs weakly, squeezing Lena closer for a beat. ‘In the flesh!’ She pulls back enough to look her over quickly, nearly snorting a handful of foil confetti in the process. 

Somebody had thrown a gaudy pink fur stole over Lena’s shoulders, and set a chintzy plastic tiara on her head sometime in the evening. Her cheeks were flushed with the warmth of the club and, apparently, half a bottle of Patrón. 

She was glowing from the heat, and the light, and the attention, and Kara feels her heart break a little at the sight of her sitting, prim and achingly beautiful, on the faded black leather chaise, glitter on her lashes like stardust. ‘I wouldn’t miss this for the world,’ she says sincerely, clasping their hands together.

‘I wouldn’t have forgiven you if you had!’ Lena laughs. She staggers to her feet with an almighty grunt and nearly keels over, clutching at Kara’s shoulder for support. ‘Oops,’ her hand slips a little lower, catches Kara around the collar of her blouse, and grasps about insistently until she manages to haul her to her feet in sympathy. ‘Sorry! Let’s go!’

‘You’re drunk,’ Kara stares, wide-eyed in dawning awe. ‘I mean, oh, my god, Lena, you’re— _tanked!’_ She gapes a little more, mouth falling open further as Lena all but drags her into the heaving crowd, all bedazzled with glitter and sweaty from dancing. 

‘And you aren’t,’ Lena sticks her tongue out at her and winks. ‘But we’ll fix that after. Right now?’ She turns on her heel in one smooth, fluid movement, and presses back against Kara hard enough to throw her off balance. Her fingers tug and pull until Kara’s arms are wrapped around her waist. ‘Dance with me,’ she says breathlessly. 

Someone—Sam, she thinks, or Jess—sallies over to them and thrusts a bottle of Guinness into her hand, the hand that isn’t currently preoccupied with keeping Lena at a respectable distance from her hips with all the grinding she was being subjected to. 

‘There you go,’ Lena giggles, delighted; she twists back to face her and attempts to steer the lip of the bottle into Kara’s mouth with shaky hands. ‘Now you can catch up!’

The rest of the evening flies by in a daze after her sixth bottle. At half-past one, Nia and Kelly start hosting a series of embarrassingly raunchy bachelorette party games she thankfully manages to elude altogether (four of which Eve wins, to Jess’ annoyance). 

At some point, Lena—to Kara’s abruptly-sober mortification—raps a floppy, orange-colored dildo onto the table and asks for a lap dance. ‘I knew we forgot the strippers,’ Kelly groans in jest, pounding on her head remorsefully with a fist. 

It takes a fair bit of coaxing to get her down from the table, but Lena eventually relents, settles for curling around Kara in a tangle, face pressed to her neck. ‘If _you_ won’t,’ she tuts giddily up at Kelly, jabbing a finger into her face. ‘Then Kara will!’ 

‘Yes, Kara,’ Nia whistles, shrieking with laughter. ‘Make it rain, babe!’ 

Lena, thankfully, eases her grip on the top half of Kara’s buttons after a few minutes—Kara protesting loudly all the while—and slumps into her side with a soft sigh. ‘Give me a minute,’ she chuckles into Kara’s ear, completely unaware of the gooseflesh rising in her wake. ‘I’m nearly sober. Don’t leave me.’

Kara smiles wistfully down at her at that, squeezes her arm once, twice. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ she says softly. 

Except Lena doesn’t quite sober up, not really, and at some point, Kara finds herself scrambling around on the sticky floor on all fours in an effort to locate the heel Lena had kicked off when she’d launched her garter into the air. 

It’s Alex who finds her like that—half an arm swallowed beneath a corner booth, sweeping blindly—and pulls her up by the elbows as soon as she manages to hook a pinky around the strap. ‘I got it,’ she grunts, stumbling to her feet with a groan. Sam, glassy-eyed and far too giggly, skips over to relieve her of the stiletto heel. 

‘I have to go in a bit,’ Alex says sheepishly. ‘I said I’d give Susan and Eve a ride home.’ Kara nods, preoccupied with wiping her hands on the back of her jeans. ‘Are you, uh, staying?’

‘What?’ she mumbles, glancing up at Alex distractedly. ‘Oh. Oh, yeah. I’ll—Lena wanted me to. Stay, I mean.’

Almost as if on cue, the opening beats of a deep, throbbing bass line come blaring over the speakers, pulsing in time with the neon spotlights flashing overhead. There’s a roar as the guests swarm back onto the dance floor, and sure enough, Lena is in the center of the throng, jostled and cheered at from her perch on Kelly and Nia’s shoulders. 

‘Right,’ Alex sniffs, deeply amused. ‘Okay, guess I’ll leave you to it. Call me as soon as you get home.’

There’s a cry, and they turn to watch as the crowd erupts in fresh cheers. Across the room, Lena unwraps the final gift of the night—a large, brightly colored pack of phallus-shaped lollies, each nearly as long as her arm.

Alex’s mouth twitches at the corners. ‘Are those—Jolly Ranchers?’

Lena lets out a laugh, loud and delighted, before holding the pack over her head amidst raucous whooping. ‘Who wants to see me eat a bag of dicks?’ she cries. 

‘Oh, my god,’ Kara sighs. 

**. . .**

She nearly loses her grip on their drinks for the second time that morning. 

The heavily made-up waitress, who had checked her hip rather hard as she barreled back towards the kitchen, shoots her a filthy glare even as she staggers, lifting the mugs overhead to steady them. 

‘Watch it, hon,’ Jen—her name tag nearly dangling off her left breast—snarls, clumpy falsies dangling precariously off her lashes. 

‘Sorry,’ Kara mumbles, and she shouldn’t be, she knows, except she gets it. Who wouldn’t be a little crabby, she thinks, tending to a pair of hungover idiots at four in the morning?

She spots Lena by the window, making stick figures out of toothpicks and packets of sweetener; she perks up some at the smell hanging thickly around her and lifts her head with a beam. 

‘Thanks,’ Lena smiles tiredly up at her. She reaches for her coffee with playful, grabby hands. ‘What,’ she smirks, glancing down at Kara’s own mug. ‘They didn’t have any waffles?’

Kara grins in spite of herself. ‘I didn’t feel like it,’ she says truthfully, laughing as Lena gasps in mock-surprise. 

What a pair they must look, she thinks, bemused. It had been her idea to get Lena significantly sobered up before heading back home, a suggestion Lena had taken readily to, thankfully, after throwing up on Kara’s shoes—twice. 

The diner was at least no more than four blocks down from the club, and Lena had been far too out of it to even consider being remotely embarrassed at her get-up, her pink fur stole slung proudly over her bare shoulders. 

She’d insisted on their holding hands the entire walk down, swinging their arms between them, and stopping only once—by a corner alley—to dry heave. 

‘I feel better already,’ Lena hums. She stretches in her seat, slowly, languorously, and lets out a long, drawn-out groan at the feeling. Her arms slide up onto the table, fingers lacing beneath her chin to prop it up. 

‘Thank you for coming tonight,’ she smiles, a little shyly. ‘I know it isn’t really your scene, but it means the world to me that you went anyway.’

It’s only the tiniest bit ridiculous to even think it, she knows, but in this moment—half her face framed in the light of the flickering, neon-pink signage; her make-up all but wiped off, mascara running in minute little streaks beneath her left eye; faux-fur stole matted and dangling around her neck—to her, Lena has never been more beautiful. 

And she must let herself look her over a little longer, long enough for Lena to blush beneath her gaze, before she smiles, more than a little wistfully. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ she repeats, and means it. 

Lena looks delighted and bashful all at once, laughing softly into her mug. ‘Oh, god. I still can’t believe it sometimes, when you look like that and I think back on—’ she trails off, overcome by a sudden timorous spell. 

‘What?’ Kara prompts, curious. ‘Think back on what?’

Across from her, Lena seems to shiver, her gumption failing altogether. She licks her lips, once, twice, and glances back at her with newfound resolution. 

‘I remember what it was _like_ back then!’ she exhales, grinning hesitantly. ‘When you used to say things like that. And, god, _that!’_ she reaches over, turns Kara’s head gently to the side as if to inspect it, and chucks her chins affectionately. ‘You’re such a cad! You see?’

‘What? A _what?’_ Kara laughs loudly, confusion growing by the minute. ‘When I say what? What do you mean?’ 

_‘That!_ That _look!’_ Lena shakes her head against a memory, eyes screwed tightly closed by a wide, embarrassed grin. She buries her face in her hands briefly, shoulders shaking in a fit of silent laughter. 

Kara reaches over, laughing in bewildered fits and starts herself, and attempts to pry her hands off her face. ‘Lena Luthor, what _look?’_ she shakes her head, mouth dropping open comically. ‘You’re being ridiculous!’ 

‘Maybe it isn’t a look,’ Lena teases, bumps her knuckles against the line of Kara’s jaw fondly. ‘Maybe it reallyis just your face.’

‘What’s wrong with my face?’ Kara pretends to frown a little, pouting up at her to Lena’s glee. She reaches across the table for a sweetener, empties two into her mug before blowing into it. ‘Well, _I_ think it’s a pretty nice face, so there!’

Lena seems to pause at that, props her chin on a hand to look her over. ‘I know,’ she hums. ‘Of course I know, obviously. You know, I used to have,’ she sighs theatrically, as if in a swoon. ‘The biggest crush on you back then.’ 

Later, much later, she would have liked to say—more out of comic relief than anything—that two things happened, then, in quick succession, for starters: that her coffee all but finds itself across her lap when she knocks it over, mouth agape; that Lena leaps to her feet with a cry of surprise in an instant, fussing over to mop her up with a swath of paper napkins. ‘Honestly, Kara,’ she would have murmured, fondly exasperated. ‘These were your nice trousers!’

Except it didn’t—it doesn’t—and the only thing left to them in the moment is an increasingly unsettling stretch of silence marked only by the slight tremble of her bottom lip.

If Lena is disconcerted at the look of utter stupefaction she thinks steals across her face right then, she conceals it well. 

‘What?’ Lena laughs, not a little uncomfortably. ‘You were cute—’ (‘ _Were?’_ Kara scoffs, in spite of herself, and the tension dissolves with Lena’s answering chuckle) ‘—you were, well, _are,_ so clever, and interesting, and kind,’ she hums. 

Her gaze grows distant, as if wistful at the very memory. All too suddenly, she snorts, the color rising in her cheeks. 

‘God, I used to,’ Lena claps a hand over her mouth, flushed and embarrassed. A nervous little giggle bursts out of her. ‘I used to call ahead, at CatCo—I’d talk to Rachel at reception to find out where you liked to go for lunch, so I could order take-out the next time I asked you over!’

It’s a silly little thing, one of many adorably thoughtful idiosyncrasies on Lena’s end, she knows, but the thought of her ringing up snooty Rachel down at reception, nervous and shy, about her lunch habits is almost more than she can bear. 

The very idea of Lena ever pining after her, in any fashion, longing and clueless to her own plight, is more than she can bear.

Lena watches her through her fingers pensively, lip caught between her teeth. ‘Oh, come on,’ she says, gentle and cajoling, reaching for her arm on the table. ‘I mean, could you blame me? I thought you were perfect! I mean, I still do,’ she pinches Kara’s arm lightly in jest. ‘But, _come on_. Besides,’ she squares her shoulders gamely, ‘don’t pretend like you didn’t know!’

‘I didn’t,’ Kara says quietly, her eyes watering to her own growing horror. She blinks, and blinks, and blinks, tilts her head back infinitesimally, wills the tears back into their ducts.

The furrow between Lena’s brows deepens; she leans back, and then forwards, tentative and wary. ‘Kara,’ she says, slowly, carefully. Her frown pinches her features into a tight, worried grimace. ‘Kara, I didn’t mean to upset you. It was a while back, I thought it’d be a funny story to te—’

‘I’m not upset,’ Kara groan-sighs raggedly; she sniffles into her hand absently, glances down at her coffee, and then glances up at her. She watches Lena get progressively blurrier with every passing second, until a tear slides down her cheek altogether, and she sees her then—clear as day, confused and distressed. ‘I just—wish you’d told me sooner.’

Lena draws back, incredulous. ‘Why?’ a wide, disbelieving grin draws the corners of her mouth upward. ‘It’s not like it’d have changed anything! I probably would’ve ruined everything before we even had the chance to become friends!’

Kara shakes her head fiercely, feels a fresh wave of tears rise, swift and obstinate. ‘You don’t know that,’ she croaks, her voice breaking right at the end. ‘You don’t know that.’

Silence slips into the spaces between them, weaves between salt shakers and table napkins, thick and cloying. 

In the far corner of the room, the rundown jukebox heaves an almighty groan after a particularly vigorous assault by a livid trucker, conceding to a tinny, crooning Bobby Darin.

By the time her lip finally stops trembling, she looks up to find Lena studying her fiercely across the table, her own lip between her teeth. A flash of indecision flickers briefly across her face. 

‘Well,’ Lena says, evenly. She draws her hands back onto her lap, clenches her fists slowly, surreptitiously. Her features soften, settle—resigned and resolute. ‘It’s too late anyway. I know that much.’

There isn’t much room to discuss anything after that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Four: In which everything— _everything—_ unravels. 
> 
> it’s the Big oOF—oH h oLY s HI T-chapter next, pencil it in, friends! have a lovely week ahead! x


	4. it matters how this ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything— _everything—_ unravels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to quote the superior Luthor a little farther down the line: it was always going to come to this, you all saw this coming. 
> 
> now, how [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb5g4UFHmfQ) was never released as a single is both a baffling conundrum and an absolute crime; is it Adele’s greatest track to date? is it this chapter’s theme for a reason? maybe so.

They settle into something resembling a routine, at the very least—founded on an all-too mutual concession, an unspoken decision to punt it all quietly behind them in light of James’ near-aggressive enthusiasm for the prep-work. 

She picks Lena up from her office most nights, funnels a few bites of dinner into her, and then drives her back home, only to be invited upstairs for a nightcap. 

Some nights, when she watches Lena putter about in the kitchen in a pair of old sweats and a threadbare cotton sweater, catching her up on their planner’s latest comedic mishaps, she lets herself think about what it’d be like to sidle up behind her; to slide her arms around her waist and press a long, lingering kiss to the skin beneath her ear; to feel her curl in gently towards her; to feel her turn in her arms and press their mouths together in response. 

Some nights, stretched out on Lena’s downy, cream-white sofa, head heavy with one too many glasses of Moscato, she lets herself think about what it’d be like to tell her: to sit her up, head bent, eyes earnest, and confess; to let fly every aching thought, to let her navigate the very heart of her grief, her impending loss; to spill the depth of her longing and allow her to map it out—to weep, and be comforted in turn. 

And, some nights, on the drive back from CatCo, Lena humming along to the Bee Gees on her stereo, Kara thinks about what it’d be like to be able to reach for her hand across the console freely, to know that—at the end of the day, at the end of _every_ day—they would be going home together, coming home to each other.

But, then, one night, Lena isn’t at her office when she comes by.

The new intern, Andy, a shy, sprightly creature of diminutive stature, offers up a timid warning that Lena’s last meeting might prove to be a rather daunting wait for her altogether. 

‘It’s fine,’ Kara says easily, waving her off. ‘I’ll send her a text to tell her. I can wait, uh, here,’ she gestures towards the spacious central lobby and parks herself on the sofa beside a disconcertingly large ficus. 

Andy offers her the remote to the massive, hundred-ten-inch screen beside the sprawling floor to ceiling windows and lets her sift through Netflix unbothered. She must fall asleep at some point, she thinks, because when she finally comes to, the evening sky is a jet-black wall, rain pattering loud and aslant against the glass windows. 

The room is awash with the soft, muted lighting coming off the Hairspray trailer on loop, and it takes a second for her to process that the figure in her periphery is James Olsen, staring down at her amusedly.

‘Oh, I— _oh!’_ she yelps, shooting to her feet in surprise. ‘Hi, sorry. I didn’t even know I’d fallen asleep!’ she laughs. 

James clicks his tongue sympathetically. ‘Long day?’ he grins, setting his satchel down on the cushions beside her. The air that filters towards her is stale and fetid, the rain-rust scent of sour turpentine. She lifts her head to look at him and discovers, to her growing chagrin, just how drunk he must be. 

She smoothes the wrinkles out of her dress shirt self-consciously, nudges her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. ‘Yeah,’ she hums, glancing about her. ‘Kind of. No homework tonight, though, so—’

‘Right,’ he laughs. He eyes the bag of take-out by her feet, toes the corner with the tip of his shoe. ‘What’s all this for?’

Kara frowns, reaching down to haul the bag up in her arms, away from his foot. ‘Oh, they’re for Lena. Well, I mean, us. For _us,_ Lena, and I. For dinner, with Lena,’ she clears her throat. ‘Me and Lena.’

‘Lena?’ he cocks a brow curiously, glances behind him in jest. The motion is enough to send him tipping to one side; he sweeps her concerned hand aside with a dismissive chuckle. ‘She took a rain check on me earlier today, said she couldn’t do dinner, something about a meeting with Obsidian North investors. I sent Jess home when I got here, she said Lena already called for Frank an hour ago.’

She stares at him blankly for a beat. ‘She’s gone?’ she stammers. ‘She’s gone home? Already?’ Her phone clatters to life on the table, almost on cue. ‘It’s not her,’ she waves off his attempt to peer curiously at her phone, frowns down at the screen. ‘It’s a promo for two-for-ones at the _Marco’s_ near my place.’

James snorts. ‘Maybe she already texted you earlier, and it got lost when the rain started pouring. Service is terrible here.’ He peers into her take-out bag hopefully, sticks a pinky in to jostle the flap on a box. ‘For the record, you’ve got all my favorites, too! That’s so sweet of you,’ he grins.

‘Happy coincidence,’ she mumbles, setting the bag down and grimacing when he fumbles for a fortune cookie. 

James turns to her at that, gazes at her steadily. His smile turns fond, and, to her surprise, tender in turn. ‘Is it?’ he rolls the empty wrapper in his fingers contemplatively. ‘Andy said she’d already told you Lena wouldn’t be free tonight, but you stayed anyway. And I always come back to my hub to log off before turning in for the night, you know that.’

An uncomfortable prickle crawls up the small of her back, gnaws incessantly at the base of her neck. She stares at him dubiously, perturbed at the look on his face. ‘I wanted to wait for her,’ she sets her chin up at him, eyes hard. 

It occurs to her, much like an afterthought, a fraction of a second too late: she should’ve stepped around the ficus.

She should’ve stepped around it the second he started to make for her, hand held out entreatingly—created distance, a buffer. Her heart drops right down to her stomach the second he reaches for her hand, feels a vice close around her throat at the contact. 

A wave of helplessness washes over her, and they stare down at their hands in concert: him in quiet wonder, her in growing horror. 

‘James,’ she whispers, a warning. 

She watches in a hazy, dissociative fugue: her fingers flexing wretchedly in his grasp; her arm slackening, dead-weight in his hold. He turns her hand over slowly, slides his palm over hers in a gesture far too intimate to be taken for anything else. 

‘I’ve always wondered,’ he says softly, slotting his thumb in the spaces between her knuckles slowly, gently. ‘If I called the right shots back then,’ he chuckles to himself, ‘since everyone was telling me to look at what I was missing out on, because apparently I couldn’t see what was beside me all along.’ 

‘Don’t do this,’ Kara finally snaps, wrenching her hand out of his grasp. ‘Whatever it is you think you’re getting at, stop, walk away. Don’t.’

He takes a step forward even as she maneuvers around the coffee table, away from him, and suddenly the backs of her knees are pressed up against the edge of the sofa. 

‘You and Winn, you’ve always been my best friends,’ he says, reaching to tug her forward, towards him, by her elbows. ‘You’re the only thing in my life I’ve ever been sure of. No one’s ever gotten me the way you do, or supported me like you do, we understand each other so wel—’

‘What are you _doing?_ Why are you being like this?’ Kara shakes her head, bewildered. She holds her arms out in front of her, yelps in fear when he closes his hands around her wrists a little too tightly. ‘Let go of me,’ she hisses, twisting away from his insistent hold. ‘James, stop this, right _now,_ don’t you dare—James, let _go_ of me—! _’_

‘Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s always been you,’ James says, eyes soft and earnest, and if she wasn’t so angry at him she might’ve even felt pity at the sight. ‘And maybe I was too dumb to see it all along, Kara.’

‘How could you?’ she sighs, planting her hands against his chest for a firm shove. ‘How could you do this to Lena? How could—’

‘—Lena?’ he says, incredulous, grasps her hands in his persistently. ‘After you’ve spent the last few months driving me up the wall with all your whining, like you didn’t think I knew you didn’t want it to push through?’

‘That wasn’t because of _you,’_ she snarls, shoving him back when he crowds too closely over her. 

When it happens, her mouth is half-open, and the press of his own against hers is too hard, and too rough. Their teeth snick together when he pulls her face in, angling her head too fast and too brusque with his thumbs—click together hard enough that she bites down on her own tongue, hard enough that she bleeds enough to taste herself. 

And then, just as suddenly, he pulls away. 

Pulls away quicker than she can thrust him from her, quicker than she can scream, quicker than she can think to rear back and slap him across the face—pulls away and blinks, and blinks, and blinks at something over her shoulder. 

‘Lena,’ he says, very quietly, and she knows it, even before she turns to look at her. 

Lena is standing by Andy’s pristine, monochrome table, arms by her sides, still as anything. ‘Lena,’ he says again, startled into sobriety. He twitches once, twice, almost as if he means to move towards her, only he doesn’t. 

Lena stares at her. 

She stares, and stares, and stares, and there’s nothing poetic in the silence that stretches between them in the interim, nothing poetic about the way her eyes fix her in place, render her mute and meek and frozen—nothing flickering, nothing searching, nothing empty, nothing fierce, or glaring, or pained. 

She stares, and stares some more, and then she turns on her heel and leaves. 

She turns on her heel, and the spell breaks—time flows, rain falls, and all her breath comes rushing out in a gasp. ‘Lena,’ Kara whispers, and then louder: _‘Lena!’_ and it’s a sob, an ugly roar of sound. 

James lurches towards her, loops an arm around her waist to hold her back, but she’s already shoving her shoulder up against him, knocking all the wind out of him in a single blow. 

He stumbles, curses, trips, and she runs—she _runs:_ slips her heels off by the straps and takes the stairs four-five-six steps at a time, in leaps and bounds flight by flight, all twenty-one floors of it, until she’s sprinting, red-faced and breathless, across the lobby and out into the street. 

All she sees of Lena is her back as she retreats into her back seat, her Bentley already pulling out and away from the curb.

It takes her a split-second to inventory all the items in her pockets—a stick of gum, an old receipt for AirHeads and a can of root beer, and forty dollars in cash—and another thirty seconds, approximately, to flag down a cab before she’s racing pell-mell through downtown, urging the harried driver to run every shortcut and narrowly beating three, four red lights, muffling sobs against her shirt sleeves in vain. 

She catches up to Lena on her floor, right outside her flat, just as she lifts her hand off the keypad. The panel casing the hydraulic locks on her security door beep once, and then blink green. 

It’s a small miracle in itself, she knows, that Lena isn’t slamming the door shut behind her, that she leaves it ajar for her to slip through. 

When she does, she finds Lena by the bar, pouring herself an entire snifter of bourbon, right to the brim. Her hands are trembling. ‘How could you?’ Lena whispers defeatedly, and she’s too tired, too stunned, too overwhelmed to cry, she knows. ‘How could you do this to me?’ she says again, and this time the bourbon splashes all over her hand. 

‘I didn’t,’ Kara says, and it’s a small miracle in itself, too, that Lena understands her at all—she’s crying so hard, she knows. ‘I didn’t,’ she sobs, ‘I could never do that to you, Lena, I wouldn’t, I would never hurt you like that, please _.’_

‘I should’ve known,’ Lena murmurs to herself, pressing a hand to her brow, hard. ‘You were so upset, you were always so upset, and I thought it was because you thought things would change between _us,_ between allof us.’

‘Please,’ Kara cries, reaching for her gently, carefully. She lets herself breathe out a sob once, twice, on Lena’s shoulder when she isn’t rebuffed, arms tight around her unyielding waist. ‘It was never about him, Lena. I could never hurt you like that, I’d die before I could let myself. You don’t know what you saw.’

Lena laughs then, and it’s harsh, and wild, and wet enough for her to know that she’s finally let herself come apart, too. ‘You were kissing,’ Lena barks, flinching away from her, ‘I saw you swapping spit with my fiancé, the man _I’m_ marrying in a _month’s_ time, right in front of my eyes—and _I_ don’t know what _I_ _saw?’_

‘He forced himself on me,’ Kara snaps, too frustrated, too exasperated, too angry to cry any more. ‘He let himself think there was more to it, but there isn’t, there wasn’t!’

Lena turns away from her, paces across the living room in wide, sweeping strides in clear agitation. ‘You were so angry,’ she yells. ‘You were so angry, all the time, don’t think I didn’t know, the girls tell me.’ 

She blinks, furrows her brows, a myriad of emotions chasing each other nakedly across her face unchecked. ‘You were so upset,’ she echoes, fixing her with a glare. Her lip wobbles. ‘You were so upset, and I didn’t know how to make it better. I wouldn’t have married him if I thought it would cost me you.’

‘It wasn’t about him,’ Kara groans, clenching her fists over her head with an angry little yelp. ‘It’s not about _James,_ Lena! It’s so—so _fucking_ —’ here Lena snorts in surprise, and it jars them both a bit, ‘—difficult to believe, I know, but it isn’t, and it’s like you’re not even _listening—’_

‘I don’t know if I can ever trust you the same way again, and it scares me,’ Lena says softly. Her face crumples, and she’s crying under her breath, head turned away from her, ‘I can’t look at you the same way, I can’t stop seeing the both of you together like that. I love you,’ she sobs into her hands, ‘God, I love you, Kara, so much, but I don’t think this is something we can fix.’

It startles her enough to give her pause.

This is the way the world ends, with a whimper in the unspoken aftermath of rash irrationalities, not a bang. 

In the early days of their tentative lunch dates and after-work nightcaps—when she had been significantly less optimistic about their odds together as an unlikely, eclectic pair—in her mind, it had always been Lena who would wake up from the glaring, logistical nightmare of their friendship; who would come to her senses and see the sheer impracticality of associating herself with a small-town, two-bit reporter with hardly a byline to her name. 

But Lena hadn’t, had come to love her in every possible way, had come running to her at every beck and call, had been stronghold and comfort at need, had taken shockingly extravagant—and nearly impractical—measures on birthdays and holidays as acts of adoring fealty to her, had cared for her, plain and simple, until she could look her unflinchingly, right in the eye, and recognize her for what she was, equally plain and simple: the other half of her heart. 

This is the way her world ends, with a whimper, not a bang. 

The idea of losing Lena in any way is suddenly more than she can bear, and the thought nearly sends her to her knees, hands trembling hard enough that she has to wring the hem of her blouse with her fingers to steady them. 

‘You don’t mean that,’ she presses her lips together tightly, ‘you can’t mean that, Lena, please, look at me—I would never hurt you the way you think, you know I wouldn’t, this isn’t about him.’

‘Please leave,’ Lena says, drawing a shaky hand over her eyes. She turns her back to her, shoulders slumping forward. ‘I need some time to think, Kara. You need to go, please.’

It’s a gamble, in her state, Kara knows, but the thought of losing Lena the second she steps foot outside her door terrifies her so strongly it overrides any sense of self-preservation. 

She reaches, stumbles forward with a weak, faltering totter—

Even so, Lena folds easily enough in Kara’s arms when they wrap around her almost desperately, nose pressed to her temple. ‘Lena, please,’ she whispers into her hair, the curve of her cheek, mouth brushing wet, tasting salt, salt, salt. ‘Please, I would never hurt you like this, you know I wouldn’t, you know I would never, I could _never._ ’

And Lena knows, she _knows,_ and she breathes it against her skin in a flurry of hiccups and sobs, turning her head to bury her face into the slope of Kara’s neck. ‘How could I be so stupid,’ she whimpers, fingers scrabbling against the hard line of Kara’s back, her shoulders. ‘I didn’t—I didn’t see it, I didn’t _want_ to see it. You were always so upset, so upset with me, and I thought, I _thought—’_

‘It wasn’t him, it isn’t about him,’ Kara murmurs, drawing back from her enough to cradle her face in her hands. ‘It wasn’t, ever. You know that,’ she touches their foreheads gently together, and Lena leans into her palm with a sniffle, lip trembling. ‘You know that.’

Lena’s mouth tastes of salt when she kisses her the first time, lips warm and wet with her tears. 

Kara kisses her, just the once—a soft, gentle, delicate thing, close-lipped and careful. (Years later, when her children and niece and nephews and godchildren and grandchildren crowd her around the sofa one Zos Hanukkah, bright-eyed and earnest, to ask her what her first kiss had been like, this is the story she tells.)

It’s Lena who pulls back first, eyes fluttering open as if startling from a dream, dazed and entranced. She lets it settle between them, open and unyielding and tangible at last—lets Lena curl further into her, soft, and pliant, and acquiescent, lashes fluttering even as her hands slide up Kara’s back and around her shoulders. 

Lena shudders in her arms, face pressed into the curve of her neck, shivering like a frail, broken thing, and her arms come up to hold her tighter. They stand there, embracing for a long while, swaying infinitesimally in place. ‘Are you okay?’ Kara murmurs against her temple. 

‘Yes,’ Lena says, to her surprise. ‘Are you?’ she lifts her head shyly. 

Kara hums in assent, brushing her lips against the top of Lena’s head, whisper-soft. They retreat to the sofa eventually, unspeaking, Lena curling into her lap, as if terrified that relinquishing her hold would mean breaking whatever spell had slipped, heady and dense, over their heads. 

There was something sweet, and fine, and warm, and utterly intoxicating settling between them, now: a gentle, nameless thing that far surpassed the tension and incandescent rage that burst about them and between them no more than an hour earlier. 

Lena’s fingers weave thoughtless patterns by her collar, drawing whorls against the skin of her throat as she noses at the line of her jaw. It was by no means any attempt to coax a rise out of her—when they fall into each other again, kisses slow and deep, it unfurls like a petal in bloom, natural as anything; like the waking from a dream, in soft fits and starts; with a sigh of relief and utter contentment. 

**. . .**

There’s a crick in her neck and a deep, growing ache low in her back from where she must’ve lain twisted the entire night on the sofa.

There’s sunlight streaming through a parting in the curtains, warm on her cheek; the scent of coffee percolating, sweet, and nutty, and dark; and Lena sitting on the edge of the seat, playing with her fingers, talking softly to Andy on the phone. 

She squirms and shuffles sleepily in place a bit in an attempt to work out the knots in her shoulders, and Lena pauses, turning her head to look at her over her shoulder. 

‘Send me the draft, when you can,’ Lena says quickly, ‘with the mock-up, preferably.’ She tosses her phone onto the coffee table after thanking her and turns to face Kara fully. ‘Hi,’ she says, a soft, fond smile lighting up her features. 

Her robe slides down over a shoulder, and Kara catches sight of a smattering of light coloured bruises on her throat and along her chest; the thought of it draws a lazy, pleased sort of smile out of her in response, even as color floods her face at the memory. 

‘Hello,’ she croaks, voice thick with sleep, turning over onto her stomach and snuffling into the crook of her arm. Lena lifts a hand to stroke her cheek carefully, tenderly. She presses a kiss to her fingertips when they wander too close to the corner of her mouth, and Lena’s smile widens. ‘Are you in trouble?’ she murmurs slyly, eyeing the phone on the table.

Lena snorts, wagging Kara’s chin gently between thumb and forefinger while Kara tries to snap playfully at her fingers. ‘No, I just have a deadline to meet before the weekend,’ she hums. ‘Andy won’t let me forget about it.’ She lets Kara catch her with a laugh when she starts up a soft, goofy little whine, low in her throat, lets her nip at a fingertip. 

‘Won’t you come here?’ Kara pouts, spreading her arms out in invitation after Lena’s finger drifts down the bridge of her nose one too many times, seemingly content with tenderly petting her face. ‘Come here,’ she says, making grabby hands out towards her. 

The color rises high and bright in Lena’s cheeks, but her smile widens further and she tugs almost bashfully at the sheet covering Kara’s bare body. Kara folds her up into a tight morning hug when Lena slides down to embrace her in full, barely suppressing a grin of her own at the feel of Lena’s soft velour robe brushing against her bare skin. 

‘I made you coffee,’ Lena says, brushing the tip of her nose contentedly along the line of Kara’s neck. ‘I boiled you an egg,’ she feels her smile against the bruises she left on Kara’s throat the night before, starts sucking softly at them again. ‘I brought out bread for toast. I have bacon for frying.’

Kara nods dazedly, feels want pooling low inside her anew, slow and heavy like warm treacle with every pass of Lena’s tongue against her skin. ‘But, I also,’ and here Lena pauses, lifts her head to nip at Kara’s nose with a grin. ‘Have pancakes. But, I mean, you know, as a mix. We’d have to work with pre-mixed batter.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kara laughs, scrunches her nose in delight as Lena presses a series of small close-lipped kisses against her mouth. ‘You’re my favorite,’ she beams, squeezing Lena tighter in a crushing hug. 

‘I know,’ Lena sighs breathlessly, lets her robe fall open and down her shoulders as Kara’s playful kisses turn open-mouthed and insistent along her chest. ‘You’ve always been mine,’ she whispers sincerely, leaning down to press their lips together. 

Later, further along in the day when they’ve managed to disentangle themselves from each other long enough to dress and eat in turn, Kara sidles up behind her as she washes up. 

Her arms come up to wrap around Lena’s waist, Lena leaning back into her with a quiet, pleased little hum. ‘What do we do now?’ Kara asks timidly, rocking them gently side to side. ‘What do we do, what do we tell everyone?’

All of a sudden, Lena stiffens in her arms. Her shoulders visibly tense beneath her silk blouse, the hard line of her back rigid and unyielding. ‘What do you mean?’ Lena says defensively, turning to face her with a frown. ‘Why would we tell them anything?’

She feels a terrified sort of bewilderment start to settle in her chest at the sight of Lena’s slowly darkening face, her brows furrowing together. ‘I thought,’ she swallows, fights against the growing lump in her throat with some difficulty. ‘I thought, I mean—I,’ she feels her breath squeeze out by the measure when Lena steps back to put some distance between them, eyeing her with something like agitated confusion. 

‘Now, well, um, now that, I mean—you know how I feel about you,’ she says, fidgeting, pushes the bridge of her glasses back up her nose. 

Lena, at least, has the grace to look ashamed. ‘Yes,’ she concedes softly, glancing down at her feet. ‘Yes, but, I mean, that was between us.’ She looks back up at her in consternation. ‘Why do we have to bring anyone in?’

‘Lena,’ she tries, in vain, to keep the incredulity from bleeding into her tone. ‘Lena, what about James?’

A shadow passes over Lena’s features. ‘What about him?’ she says grimly. 

‘What are we going to tell him?’ Kara presses, reaching for her. A knot twists deep inside her when Lena flinches away, looking uncharacteristically anxious. ‘Lena,’ she stammers, tears filling her eyes in growing realization. ‘Lena, you’re not still thinking about marrying him, are you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lena says, studiously avoiding her gaze. Kara lets her eyes fill helplessly even as Lena twists, turning away from her and retreating into the living room. ‘I don’t know, Kara,’ she wrings her hands together. A cold sweat gathers along the line of her brow. ‘I don’t know, there’s so much to consider. So much to think about.’

Kara trails after her, bumbling along like a lost puppy. She leans against the back of the sofa, wiping at her face with the sleeves of her sweater. ‘Well,’ she hiccups, and Lena looks up at her with pity and remorse. ‘Well, like what?’ 

‘Like,’ she throws her hands up in frustration. ‘Like, do we talk about it, James and I? Do we talk about how we both had, have, feelings for you, and the way I—I mean, myself, at least, last night, with you,’ her face turns red briefly. ‘Do we not talk about trying to make it work between us, at least?’

Kara lifts her head to regard her with open derision, feels a sudden burst of anger flare, ugly and quick, inside her. ‘Make it work, with him?’ she cries, features twisting against the threat of a fresh onslaught of tears. ‘Why?’ she chokes. ‘Why would you even think about it?’

The way Lena looks at her then, like she’s grown a second head, galvanizes something inside her, and her tears retreat back into their well with a shudder. 

‘Three years, Kara!’ Lena rolls her eyes in exasperation. ‘James and I were together three whole years! Everyone, both our families,’ she rubs her hands briskly across her face, exhaling shakily. ‘All our friends—it was always going to come to this, you all saw _this_ coming,’ Lena flashes her hand up and out as a reminder: the light glints off the diamond on her finger. ‘James and I, we saw this coming. You did, too.’ Her eyes fill with tears. ‘You did, too.’

‘So that’s what this is?’ Kara hears herself asking. Her voice no longer trembles. ‘That’s all this is to you? Why you told him yes? Did you feel like you owed him something?’ she hears herself growing louder in volume. 

Lena bristles visibly at that. ‘Don’t do this,’ she says, tone dropping dangerously low. ‘Don’t you dare, Kara. I didn’t know how you felt—about him, about _me,’_ her voice wavers. ‘You never told me. You had all the time in the world to tell me, and you waited this long, and for what?’

‘Well, what about you?’ Kara splutters, growing increasingly red-faced. ‘You never told me either!’

‘Because there wasn’t anything to say!’ Lena cries.

It startles them both, enough to jar Kara into silence. Lena looks thoroughly abashed at her outburst, and the shame that flashes nakedly on her features however briefly is worse than a slap to the face. Kara feels her stomach churn with abject humiliation. ‘What,’ she rasps after a moment, shrinking into herself. ‘Did you—did you just feel sorry for me last night then?’ 

It’s a small wonder in itself that Lena doesn’t give herself whiplash at the speed with which her head snaps up. ‘No,’ Lena protests hotly, looking positively stricken. She closes the distance between them when Kara remains silent, staring down at her feet, mortified tears streaming down her face. 

‘No, Kara. God, no,’ she declares sternly. She takes Kara’s face in her hands, knocks their foreheads together carefully. ‘I only meant that I’d sworn I’d never bring it up, ever again. Not with you. I never imagined you’d ever feel the same way, and I loved you too much to risk losing you,’ she whispers in the space between their mouths. ‘I can’t lose you.’

‘Then what are we doing?’ Kara whispers tiredly, leaning into her palm. ‘What do we do?’

And then it’s Lena who curls into her, faltering and frightened. She buries a sob against Kara’s shoulder, arms tight around her neck. ‘I don’t know,’ she shivers helplessly. ‘I don’t know.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Five: In which several truths, at last, come to light.
> 
> an incredibly lovely anon sent me [these](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrVjLVfNmYs) equally [lovely](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0BwIvjNd20) arrangements on tumblr because they were reminded of the fic, and they’re so close to usurping Fogelberg’s Longer in my heart as the ideal wedding march because of the strings on both alone, oof. 
> 
> keep those chins up, sweethearts—they'll pull their acts together, er, eventually. this does end happily lmao. x
> 
> Please let me know what you thought! And then come say hello and drop me a line on [tumblr](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/), or on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/subtleanarchist) Have a great week ahead! x


	5. here in the dark, in these final hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which several truths, at last, come to light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly the best part of my day is reading all your comments, they’re an absolute _joy._
> 
> [Bon Iver ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3VjaCy5gck) and [Dave Thomas Junior’s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FteIC0nG76k) covers of a downright timeless classic set the tone perfectly. 

It’s Alex who finds them out two weeks afterward.

Absolutely nothing reaches any of Lena and James’ mutual friends: no reports of the incident, Kara’s involvement, or James’ single-minded attempts to mend things. 

In fact, if Lena had told James anything at all, it hardly causes a stir; he doesn’t come for Kara, doesn’t speak to her at all aside from the one tearful phone call he’d made the morning after, spluttering apology after apology. 

And, true to fashion, absolutely nothing of lasting import changes between her and Lena—she still comes around to her penthouse most evenings, drained after a fourteen-hour work day, and orders in for dinner and an episode or two of _Drag Race_ like always. 

Except, most evenings, she no longer goes home to her own flat.

Except, most evenings end with her falling into Lena’s bed, falling apart in Lena’s arms—falling, falling, falling headlong in an unscrupulous whirlwind of a tumble. 

And Lena—Lena, in the aftermath, hardly lets her up for air, in bed or otherwise. 

It’s as if the very act of meeting in itself—their lunch dates, for one; their coming together at the end of the day, another—the sheer nature of its illicitness, an all too welcome act of sedition from her norm, excites her like nothing on earth. 

Almost as if the covert, frantic nature of their coupling, spontaneous and heated and rushed, incites a newfound quickening in Lena: a springing-to; the thrill of it galvanizing something inside her, both entrancing and near-frightful in its intensity. 

Lena kisses with intent, like a wick catching flame: kisses to consume her, to take her further into herself with a barely concealed air of insatiable desperation; kisses with wanton abandon, with all the uninhibited, animal lust that years upon years upon years of wanting have only brought to a roiling boil.

But, then, when she settles later, soft, and sated, and spent—she kisses for the sake of it, for the feel of Kara’s mouth on her own, warm and damp; her fingers pressed to the line of her jaw, the back of her head, their faces so close together they could but share a breath: and they do. 

The Wednesday morning it all falls apart finds Kara in bed, the _Tribune_ crossword spread across her knees, sheets pooled around her hips. 

She’d only gotten a brief glimpse of Lena pacing down the hall earlier in the day, brows drawn tightly together, barefoot in her black velour robe; she’d had a phone pressed to her ear, her tablet in one hand and a French press in the other. 

Fifty-five, Across—Mary Holden, _Strike Up the Band_ —however, is a conundrum like nothing else and a downright fix, and she pauses to hunch over the page in annoyance, pen dancing along her fingertips. 

The mattress dips behind her, Lena slipping into bed, still humming noncommittally into her phone on occasion. Forty-three, Down is exactly seven boxes square—she’d already penned in _Patriot_ definitively—and thoroughly engrossed as she is, she hardly notes the way Lena sweeps her hair back over a shoulder to peer down at the paper with her, chin tucked into the curve of her neck.

It’s difficult, however, to miss the way she starts mouthing at her ear, or the slide of her warm, wet tongue against the curl of her lobe. The want rises in her at that, slow, and low, and insistent, and she finds herself leaning back into Lena’s chest, her arms, a steady ache building between her legs. ‘Judy Garland,’ Lena suddenly whispers, pressing a soft, close-mouthed kiss to her neck.

‘What?’ She blinks dazedly, craning her neck back to look at her with a frown. Lena smiles back, equally confused, and murmurs lowly into the phone; she makes a small, flippant gesture down at the paper. 

_Oh,_ Kara hums, pleased, _right_ : she scrawls it in quickly—neat, blocky print, eleven even boxes—and accepts another pleased little kiss to her cheek afterward. 

‘It can wait,’ Lena says aloud, a little impatiently. ‘Tell him it can wait. It isn’t important, not like this is.’ Andy, Kara thinks, must give some indication of assent at least, because Lena offers a quick, murmured goodbye and thumbs the phone closed. 

‘Trouble with the presses?’ Kara asks curiously, taking her hand in hers. 

The crease between Lena’s brows evens out some, a smile crinkling the corners of her eyes. ‘More like trouble with the press,’ she snorts, looking down at her lap. ‘It’s libel. They’re saying L-Corp’s subsidiary divisions are funneling ghost transactions into shell companies under CatCo before we’ve even had time to publish a financial statement for our shareholders.’ She buries her face into Kara’s shoulder heavily. ‘I can’t afford another dip like this, our shares, the stocks. Not when I’m so close to sealing the merger with Obsidian North.’

‘It’ll blow over, you’ll see,’ Kara says soothingly, planting a kiss to the top of her head. ‘You aren’t doing anything wrong. They can be as finicky as they want with your fiscal reports, they won’t find any discrepancies. You’ve never been dishonest about anything.’

Lena shivers involuntarily beside her and pulls back, eyes downcast. Her shoulders stiffen into a long, rigid line, and she noses absently at the back of Kara’s shoulder, working a lip between her teeth. ‘They tried to run the story for the morning edition, but my lawyers caught it,’ she says eventually. ‘What a thing to wake up to.’ 

The _Tribune_ disappears in a flurry at that, tucked briskly beneath the bed, and then it’s Lena’s warm weight that replaces the crossword on Kara’s lap, her startled yelp caught low in her throat. Her arms wind tightly around Lena’s waist, chin tucked against her shoulder in a warm, engulfing hug that Lena returns with a soft snuffle.

The tension of the morning’s scruples eases some from Lena’s shoulders with every comforting pass of Kara’s hand in wide circles against her back. It must take something like the better part of an hour for her anxiety to dissipate, but fairly soon enough she shifts until she’s all but curled up in Kara’s lap instead, legs tucked to the side, arms wound loosely around her neck. 

‘Do you want me to come in with you today?’ Kara says quietly, tilting Lena’s chin up with a gentle hand to meet her gaze. ‘I don’t have to call in this afternoon, I don’t have any deadlines due.’

‘No,’ Lena sighs, leaning into her hand. Her eyes flutter closed. ‘No, you don’t have to. Besides, we’ll see each other tomorrow night anyway, with Sam and the others.’ 

It takes a long, awful minute for it to sink in, and when it does, Kara all but shrinks away from her. ‘Right,’ she mutters, a touch agitated and only the least bit bitter. ‘Right, the dinner thing with both your parents.’

‘Oh, darling,’ Lena whispers, sounding small and concerned. Kara tries, valiantly, not to flinch when Lena leans in to press their foreheads together, to lay a half dozen kisses across her face, her nose; tries valiantly to keep the tears from pooling stubbornly at the corners of her eyes. ‘Kara,’ Lena murmurs, features drawn into a worried frown. ‘You know it isn’t anything—’ 

‘No, I know,’ Kara says tiredly, waving her off. ‘I know, it isn’t. It’s just—’ she takes Lena’s hands in hers, squeezes tightly. ‘Shouldn’t we talk about what we’re going to do, after? What _do_ we do? You’re—’ she watches a lone, traitorous tear slide down Lena’s cheek, and she chases it with her fingertips to the corner of her mouth, her lips already pressed to the shine of its wet trail. ‘You’re getting married next week,’ she finishes weakly. 

She lets Lena press their lips together softly, lets herself shiver a little in fear at the thought, lets Lena love all over her face to soothe her, arms tight around her waist, her shoulders. ‘You know it’s you I love, don’t you?’ Lena whispers against her mouth, crying quietly now herself in earnest. ‘You know it’s you I’d choose, in every lifetime and the next.’

‘Yes,’ Kara says unhesitatingly, and knows it, means it, in spite of herself. ‘Yes.’

Lena sags against her, face pressed to her neck, her tears sliding hot and fast down her throat. ‘We’ve already wasted so much time,’ she sighs. ‘All the years between us.’ 

‘But we don’t have to,’ Kara says eagerly, pulling her closer. ‘Not anymore. Not when—when we know. We didn’t, before. Everything is different now.’

Lena pulls back to look her squarely in the eyes, her own a bright, brilliantly vivid green in the morning light. Her hands come up to brush the fair curls back from Kara’s forehead, her gaze flickering over her face. Something like resolve hardens Lena’s features the longer she studies her own, and Kara’s breath stutters in her chest at the sight.

‘Everything,’ Lena breathes, nodding almost as if to herself. She laces their fingers together tightly in her lap, presses her forehead to Kara’s temple, eyes drifting closed. ‘Everything.’ 

**. . .**

That evening, Kara purposely drops in an hour later than her invite requests her to.

She nearly crumples the thick, embossed card when she stuffs it into the pocket of the faux-mink stole she thrusts into the arms of the cloakroom attendant, ignoring his disapproving glare in favor of dashing straight down the hall to the dinner. 

It’s a fair fix she finds herself in, having been turned around once, twice, in the sprawling garden pavillions, before she finally gets pointed down the lane by a sympathetic passing attendant. 

The music is loud enough that she hears them long before she sees them, coming up around the bend, the deep throbbing bass line hammering into her chest. There’s a whole host of people drifting around in the grass outside the ballroom, friends and family in pairs, in threes, clutching full plates, champagne flutes. 

She spots Eve off in a corner, smoking, looking reserved and resplendent in a long, sweeping gown the color of midnight. It’s a quick enough matter, picking her way through a group of middle-aged men in suit jackets worth three whole years of her rent, before they’re beside each other.

‘You’re late,’ Eve says wryly, smirking around her cigarette. She leans back against the great glass windows of the veranda and expels another long line of smoke. ‘But, you clean up very, very nicely. All the same, you know we’ve got to stop meeting like this.’ 

Kara shoots her a commiserating little smile and staggers, hands on her knees, taking deep, gulping breaths. ‘This—thing,’ Kara gasps, waving flippantly behind her. ‘It’s so _big._ I ran the whole way down and got lost, stepped into two different parties on the way here.’ 

Eve snorts. ‘Yep, it’s huge. It is. Trust the Luthors to spare no expense,’ she flicks the ash off her cigarette rather carelessly, tapping the filter back up to her mouth. ‘Not on their golden girl anyway. You missed the big entrance. It was stunning. She was stunning.’

‘She always is,’ Kara says, drawing herself upright to check her reflection briefly in the glass window. ‘And that was kind of the whole point.’

‘You just didn’t, what, want to see them come in together?’ Eve raises a brow. She takes a deep, final pull, the filter flaring a bright, vivid orange, before grinding it out on her heel. ‘Not that you had anything to worry about anyway. Come on,’ she says, holding out her hand. ‘The scallopini is to die for.’ 

They get separated almost as soon as they step in, Kara shooting her a helpless, apologetic look over her shoulder when Cat Grant hooks an arm around hers to tow her away. She spends the better part of an hour in the company of old colleagues in the bullpen, common friends with Lena, slowly demolishing an entire platter of petit fours. 

She’s only just managed to steal away, sliding back down to the buffet table and contemplating how best to walk away with a tray of crudites unnoticed, when an arm slides around her waist. ‘Don’t worry,’ Lena breathes in her ear. ‘I’ve already told the caterers two of those trays are yours. Just give them your name before you head home.’ 

Lena is a vision in low-cut scarlet silk faille, shoulders pale and bare and utterly entrancing. ‘Lena,’ she finds herself stammering, lids growing heavy with something like awe and want in equal measure. ‘You’re _beautiful.’_

‘Thank you, darling,’ Lena smiles, bashful and charmed. ‘You, too. I’ve never seen this lacy black number,’ she tugs coyly at the strap of her shoulder. ‘It’s very becoming.’ 

‘It’s Sam’s,’ Kara beams, pleased. ‘She said she’d let me borrow it for tonight.’

‘Well, then, we’ll be sure to thank Sam tonight, too,’ Lena smirks, tangling their fingers together. She lets her lead them through the crowd, threading between the media crews and photographers loitering in the back, and into a service elevator, right up to the fourth floor. 

It isn’t until she’s being ushered into the powder room at the end of the hall that she finally gets the idea, and says so aloud, to Lena’s infinite amusement. ‘We won’t be too long,’ Lena laughs, locking the door behind her. ‘I just want a proper hello.’ And then they’re kissing, gently, carefully, at first, and then fiercely, Lena thrust up onto the marble top counter, Kara between her legs. 

It’s an easy, quick thing, hauling up the length of Lena’s gown up over her legs, and even easier to slide between them, mouths pressed tightly together. ‘Okay, baby,’ Lena gasps out once Kara makes a move to slide a hand under her dress, pulling back with difficulty. ‘Easy,’ her fingers stroke gently at the soft, downy hairs at the base of Kara’s neck, petting lightly at her nape. ‘You’re really working me up.’

‘Sorry,’ Kara says, red-faced, reaching up to brush Lena’s hair back behind her ear. ‘I just missed you.’ 

‘I missed you, too,’ Lena says, smiling softly against her mouth. ‘So much, darling.’ 

They stand there for a beat, embracing tightly, Kara nosing contentedly behind her ear. ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ Kara murmurs, lowering her eyes. 

Lena slips a hand between them to wipe at the corner of Kara’s mouth, where her own rouge had spread like a faint stain. ‘No, I get it,’ she says, soft, and low, and reassuring. ‘But, you know, you didn’t have to. We didn’t come in together. I haven’t even seen him yet this evening.’

‘Regardless,’ Kara smiles, pressing their lips together briefly. ‘I should’ve seen you tonight, then. Eve said you were perfect, and you are. You look a vision tonight. Took my breath away.’

A flurry of sudden, harsh raps on the door jars them both to their feet, and they spring apart ashamedly. 

‘Hello?’ someone calls, shrilly. ‘Anybody in here? This floor is closed, I’m cleaning.’

‘It’s a cleaner,’ Kara hisses in surprise, shooting Lena a look of absolute bafflement. ‘I didn’t think anybody saw us come in.’

‘I don’t think she did, but the door _is_ locked, so she must’ve put two and two together,’ Lena fusses with her hair swiftly, tightening the up-do with quick fingers, and dabs at her make-up ineffectually. ‘Sorry, just a second,’ she says aloud. ‘My zipper broke, my friend’s helping me fix it.’

The cleaner doesn’t so much as spare them a second glance when they sidle past her almost sheepishly. They break into a run when they round the corner, dashing down the hall, hands clasped together, giggling madly. 

Kara helps her pat at the last, obstinate creases on her dress in the elevator ride back down. ‘I just have to go around a bit with him,’ Lena says, leaning forward to brush their noses together. ‘Say hi to a few of his old friends, his family. And then we can go home.’

**. . .**

It takes a bit of work trying to slip past Cat Grant unnoticed, but she manages it well enough, and comes away from the near-encounter with an entire serving plate of canapes off a passing tray to show for it. 

It becomes a full meal when she swipes a peach bellini off another passing server; but it’s another matter entirely, however, trying to find a quiet corner to properly lay into her quarry, so she makes for the open gardens out in the pavillion. 

There’s a long, stone bench off towards the end of the lane, beneath a charming little canopy draped with fairy lights. It’s secluded enough to have avoided the attention of passers-by, much to her relief, and she settles down with a pleased little huff. 

It isn’t until she’s halfway through her bellini a half hour later that anything of import happens, and when it does, she nearly drops the flute altogether:

From her vantage point on the bench, a good fifty feet away from the raised veranda off to the side of the ballroom, she catches a clear glimpse of James dragging a struggling Lena by the arm towards the back. 

She’s up on her feet and sprinting across the grass towards them before she can give it a second thought, purse flung carelessly behind her. Her pulse thunders double time the second she’s close enough to hear Lena’s muted sounds of distress. ‘Hey!’ she cries, seizing James’ coat by the collar. ‘James, stop! You’re hurting her!’ 

‘Shut _up!’_ James snarls, shrugging her off so violently she stumbles backward, nearly tripping on her heels. He swings toward her with wide, livid eyes, his mouth locked into a rictus of repulsion. ‘Keep your voice down! This doesn’t concern you.’ 

‘It does if you’re hurting her,’ Kara hisses, looking over at Lena with open concern. Behind him, arm wrenched upward at an awkward angle, Lena is pale as a sheet, lips pressed tightly together. ‘Lena,’ she says lowly, holding a hand out to her. ‘Lena, it’s okay, you’re okay, let’s go. I’ll take you home.’

‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ James roars, lurching towards her threateningly. He wrenches Lena towards him, ignoring her sudden, sharp cry of pain. ‘What, you think you own her now? You think it means anything because you’ve fucked her?’

She feels her heart drop like a leaden weight, right down to her stomach. Beside him, across from her, she hears Lena draw a single, rattling breath just as she does, her own catching tight and low in her chest. She feels the color receding from her face, swift as the waning tide. 

And then, much to her shame and mortification, a violent trembling seizes her all at once. 

_‘What is going on here?’_ a voice snaps behind her. She hardly has the strength to turn towards Kelly and Jess, both of whom emerge from the heavy curtain partition off to the back, the wide French doors swinging wildly off its hinges behind them. ‘James,’ Kelly starts, horrified. ‘What are you doing? Let go of her, you’re hurting her!’

James laughs, a harsh, growling bark. _‘I’m_ hurting _her?’_ His fingers tighten angrily on Lena’s arm, drawing another yelp out of her. ‘Where was all this sympathy at my expense,’ he spits, pulling her forward, ‘when you were spreading your cunt for your whore?’ 

‘James, that’s _enough!’_ Kelly yells, slamming her hands against his chest. Lena slips out of his grasp, tumbling limply into Jess’ arms just as Kelly rounds on him. 

It’s one thing, Kara thinks belatedly, having to fend off the incandescent rage of a jilted lover, and another thing entirely to have to hear him weep. 

James sags forward like a tippler, drunk on the weight of his own grief and rancor. ‘Do you know,’ he groans, lifting his head up to Kelly almost pleadingly, tears streaming freely down his crumpled face. ‘Do you even _know_ what she’s done to me? What they’ve been doing behind my back?’ 

He totters towards Lena, drawing himself back with increasing vigor. ‘Did you tell her?’ he demands, jabbing a finger back at Kelly. ‘Did she know you two’ve been _fucking?’_

‘Lena,’ Kelly says slowly, holding a hand up in front of her in growing affront. ‘Lena, what’s he saying? What does he mean, you’ve been—you haven’t been—’ she purses her lips tightly, realization dawning on her face. ‘With _who?’_

It’s the bewildered indignance in her tone that sets James off, likely—all too suddenly, he launches himself at Kara, seizing her by the shoulders with a roar. 

Her glasses fly off her face in the ensuing confusion, the screams and cries in her ears washing over her like a wave; she flinches, shutting her eyes and angling her head away from what, she imagines, is an oncoming flurry of blows, but he only sinks against her, crying against her neck and shaking her vigorously. 

‘How?’ he gasps tearfully, rattling her hard enough her teeth clatter together. ‘How could you do this to me? _How could you do this to me?’_

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers, trembling violently in his grip. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’

A pair of cameramen from the _National City Daily_ yank James away from her a minute later just as Alex herself comes running pell-mell towards her, heaving him backward and forcing him to his knees even as he folds in on himself, wracked with quiet sobs. 

She’s shivering so awfully her shoulders are heaving, but it isn’t until one of the cameramen touches her lightly on the arm, asking quietly if she was alright, that she even notices. And even then, she hardly notices the crowd growing around them, the accusatory glares and the baffled looks of abject betrayal leveled at her by friends and family of the bride and groom alike, because it’s Lena who won’t look at her.

She only has eyes for Lena, and Lena won’t look at her.

Sam and Eve dash forward just as a growing furor erupts off to the back, propping Lena up between them protectively, Jess whispering furiously beside her. The dramatics of the evening must be a heady nightcap in its own right, because it intoxicates the crowd to a degree, whipping them into a feral, impressionable frenzy hardly contained by the Luthors’ contingent security detail.

It swells and dissipates around the aggravated parties, eventually dissolving about them altogether to hover curiously over to the back when a growing clamor reveals itself to be Lilian Luthor and Cat Grant locked in an increasingly heated conversation, with Lena’s older brother, Lex, gesturing wildly at her beside his mother. 

It’s then that she vaguely registers someone clutching desperately at her arm, tugging her back from the ghastly tableau. ‘Kara,’ she hears Alex stutter. ‘Kara, come on, let’s go. Come _on.’_

‘No,’ she mumbles, pulling her arm free rather brusquely. ‘No, wait.’ 

Lena won’t look at her. Lena won’t look at her, and she feels it like an insidious blow within her, feels her heart—already leaden and aching and thoroughly abraded—sink even lower. 

She shrugs Alex’s hand off her shoulder callously when she attempts to pull her back, and stumbles forward, holding her hands out in front of her in a comforting gesture. ‘Lena,’ she whispers, dipping her head to catch her gaze. ‘Lena, it’s okay. It’ll be okay. Look at me, please.’

Sam shoots her a withering glare, part bemused, part pitying. ‘Kara, stop,’ she hisses, tugging Lena behind her. ‘Stop right there. Don’t give the press any more than they already have. We’ll take her home.’ 

‘Okay,’ Kara says, cowed and contrite. She wrings her hands together. ‘Okay. Please, just—please look after her, I—’

‘Yes, Kara,’ Jess says, cutting her off with an impatient flick of her hand. And then, softer, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘We’ll text you. But, you know,’ she glances over at Sam and the two share a brief, furtive look. ‘It’s—all up in red right now. Even _you’ve_ got to do some serious damage control on your end.’

_Damage control,_ Kara thinks, mouth drying uncomfortably, _a radical understatement._

‘Right, okay,’ Kara says instead, finally letting Alex pull her back by the arm. ‘Okay.’ It’s impulsive, she knows, but a sudden, quick flare of pure, unadulterated fear slices through the haze of her thoughts, tightening around her throat, her stomach. 

‘Lena,’ she says loudly, and more than a few heads turn to her in surprise. ‘Lena,’ she repeats, beseeching, and Lena finally, _finally,_ lifts her head to look at her, bright green eyes tear-filled and red-rimmed. ‘It’ll be okay,’ she breathes, because it’s all she can think of to say—a platitude, in part, and a supplication. ‘It’s okay. We—it’ll be okay.’

It’s then that Lionel Luthor, tall, grim, and utterly imposing, steps down into the pavillion, politely urging their family and friends to come back into the ballroom. She finally lets Alex, already beyond aggravated and impatient, seize her around the waist and shove her back in the direction of the parking lot.

**. . .**

The ride home is oddly quiet in contrast, the deep, pervasive silence punctuated in the interim only by Alex’s quiet, telling sobs. 

‘When did you find out?’ Kara hears herself saying, staring fixedly ahead. 

To her credit, Alex makes no move to deny it, her whimpers merely increasing in volume, muffled only by a hand pressed to her face. ‘I only found out yesterday, when you forgot to log out of your Messages on my Macbook,’ she concedes, voice thick with tears. ‘I’m so sorry, Kara, I—I should’ve talked to you first.’ She pauses, but Kara doesn’t so much as glance at her in acknowledgment. ‘I didn’t know he’d react the way he did. But, he was our friend, and there was no getting through to you, not when it came to Lena.’

There’s nothing she can think of to say to that, nothing remotely appropriate, or civil, so she lets the silence thicken between them again instead, punctuated alternately in the interim now by the dull snick of her own teeth grinding together. 

‘It’ll be okay,’ Alex ventures, parroting her own platitudes back at her. She turns to face her hopefully at a traffic light. ‘They’ll clear it all up with the media, the Luthors. And when the circus dies down, and all of you talk it over, you know, you, and Lena, and—and James, it’ll be okay. We’ll all be okay.’

‘No,’ Kara says quietly, staring resolutely out the windshield. Her jaw tenses into a rigid, painful line the tighter she clenches her teeth, fists balled tightly on her lap. 

Alex hadn’t seen it, but she had, just as she was being frog-marched squarely backwards after calling out to Lena—Lena whose face had fallen in defeated resignation, bottom lip trembling something awful. _‘It’ll be okay,’_ she’d promised, and Lena—Lena had only given an infinitesimal shake of her head in response. 

‘No,’ Kara repeats, soft and quiet. She closes her eyes against a fresh flow of tears, leans her head tiredly against the window. ‘No, it won’t be.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nooooo, Kara, it will! 
> 
> Chapter Six: In which Clark comes to the rescue, Nia throws a farewell party, and Kara grows a backbone (or, alternatively: In which Lena realizes that self-serving indecision has massive consequences of equally immense import)
> 
> if there’s one thing the infectious diseases module i’ve been neck-deep in and poring over these last two weeks has taught me definitively, it’s that things have to get a whole lot worse before they can get immensely better. yay, character growth!
> 
> friends, take a breath, first, yes? a deep, grating breath. then pat yourself on the back, because we’re halfway through. now, before you throw your stones, here’s your weekly reminder that: this does end happily. all will come to light. people grow. and even cowards take heart. x
> 
> please let me know what you thought! and then come say hello and drop me a line on [tumblr](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/), or on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/subtleanarchist) Have a great week ahead! x
> 
> p.s. also, how are we feeling about that S6-announcement, y’all lmao


	6. a provisional existence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clark comes to the rescue, Nia throws a farewell party, and Kara grows a backbone (or, alternatively: In which Lena realizes that self-serving indecision has massive consequences of equally immense import)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clark—and, for the matter, Lois, here, too—are both off Smallville! (Welling and Durance! _squee!)_
> 
> it’s been years and years and years, but this [soft, touching identity reveal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fYjFfaJPkg) is still the sweetest, most adorable moment of all bloody time—the swelling music! the vulnerable, fearful hesitation! the patient, gentle encouragement! the palpable, _utter_ relief! the tender, reverent face touching!—and is honestly everything the reveal between Kara and Lena should’ve been, ever since Costume and Wardrobe decided to put Lena in almost the [ exact same, iconic outfit.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekIHnOCZ7JE&list=PLW7Gr9DY_yJGRLsBNvctO_NVp_W6u5BQq&index=13&t=0s&app=desktop)

Clark calls on her on Sunday morning.

She’s halfway down the squat, uneven steps leading down to the wide foyer across from the concierge at her flat, wallet in hand, when she sees him leaned up against the back of the long, paisley-patterned sofa in the common room. 

To his credit, he doesn’t move to make any overt gestures of over-eager recognition, settling instead for a tight-lipped grimace that, in the bright morning light filtering through the stained glass windows, might nearly be mistaken for a grin—but only just.

‘Um,’ she says, rather eloquently. 

‘Hi,’ his grimace widens further, the corners of his mouth turned up, and it’s only then that she notices the faint, red-purple bruise along his cheek. ‘Hi, sorry to drop in on you like this—weird, I know. But, you weren’t answering any of our calls. Lois was worried.’

She smiles at that, shifts her weight awkwardly from foot to foot. ‘Just Lois, then?’ she teases.

‘Just Lois,’ he shrugs exaggeratedly, looking down between his own feet. ‘Wouldn’t let me come home.’

Her hand fidgets at her side, impatient; she scratches her nose for something to do. ‘I figured, since Metropolis is halfway across the country,’ she muses. 

‘Well,’ he relents, flashing her a genuine grin in turn. ‘There is also that.’ He nods down at the wallet in her hand, his grin shifting, turning coy, and boyish, and charming. ‘Do you feel like buying me breakfast? I haven’t had anything to eat since my flight got in at ten last night.’

She scoffs, turns her nose up at him in a gesture of faux-scorn so convincing it draws a loud laugh out of him. ‘You came here to accost _me,_ you should be paying for the pleasure of my company.’

It’s nearly a quarter to nine when they finally settle down at an empty park bench by the quay, bagels in hand, but not before Clark starts pestering her so relentlessly she up and buys him an Orange Julius to pacify his incessant cajoling. 

He lets her finish her own meal first, lets her tap at the bottom of the bag with a hum while she tips the crumbs into her open mouth, before he sets his drink down between them decisively. ‘I know you don’t want to talk about it,’ he says, rolling his used wrappers up into a tight ball. ‘But you’ve locked everyone out since it happened, Alex tells me, so something tells me you probably should. Just to, you know, get it off your chest.’

She hums noncommittally, swings her legs to and fro beneath the bench instead. ‘I’m sorry,’ Clark continues, pulling a leg up beneath him to face her fully. ‘I read about what happened, at CatCo. Also,’ he flushes, right to the tips of his ears, ‘Cat gave me a call about it.’

‘It was very civil,’ Kara finally says, knocking his hand off the cup between them to take a long sip. ‘HR said it’d be an ethical nightmare, but really, I don’t think James and I could’ve survived another month in the same bullpen anyway, let alone a year. I let them process the whole thing, I didn’t exactly quit. I get to keep the pay benefits. And anyway,’ she glances at him sidelong, a wry smile tugging at her lips. ‘Cat wrote me a _‘glowing commendation’_ to _‘aid my future endeavors’_ to make up for it.’

Clark hoots, long and loud. ‘To be fair,’ he snickers. ‘She meant well. And it _would_ get you in anywhere.’ A sudden hard gust of wind blows the paper bag off his lap and they bow out in cue, clearing the bench hastily when another gale whips at them with a whistle. 

They make for the boardwalk instead, a ways from the evening fair, stock-still and silent in the chill morning air. She loops her arm through his, and he tucks it against him gallantly, clasping her hand in the crook of his elbow. ‘You know,’ she says, breaking the comfortable silence between them. ‘The Luthors did such a fantastic hush-up job of it, it didn’t even break the morning edition, Friday morning. I can’t imagine how you found out.’

He chuckles, squeezes her hand. ‘News travels fast. And by news,’ he continues, after she shoots him a dubious look, ‘I mean Alex Danvers, and by travel, I mean a very contrite, but concerned phone call the following morning the second she realized you’d blocked her contact and set restrictions with security at your flat.’

She snorts in spite of herself. ‘Did James call you, too?’ she demands, frowning deeply when he nods. ‘Did he tell you what he tried to pull on _me_ , too?’

‘No, Cat did, because _you_ told her, and then I gave him hell for it,’ he huffs, pointing to the streak beneath his eye before pulling her closer protectively. ‘So I guess that’s mine and Lois’ invite gone then, too,’ he scoffs, and Kara checks his hip gently, reproachfully. ‘Lucy had a different opinion because they used to date, said it was good on you to teach him a lesson, really get back at him with the thing with Lena.’ 

She opens her mouth to protest angrily, but he shakes his head at her. ‘But, I told her it wasn’t that. That,’ he finally stops them close to the fishing goods-rental booth, leans them up against the wooden railing overlooking the water. ‘You’d loved her for a long, long time.’

Her eyes water reflexively. ‘It doesn’t even matter anymore,’ she manages eventually, leaning her head against his shoulder. ‘She won’t talk to me, won’t answer any of my messages, my calls.’

‘It’s got to be hard on her, too,’ he says comfortingly, tucking his chin against the top of her head. ‘But, she’ll come around when it all dies down. Besides, L-Corp is closing that merger with Obsidian North this week, too, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not that,’ she says defeatedly, feels the lump in her throat grow substantially at the thought. ‘It’s not—this time, the Luthors made sure it made the papers. Every edition, this side of the globe. What?’ she coughs out a weak, watery laugh at his wrinkled brow, tries in vain to stem a rising tide of hysteria welling inside her. ‘I thought news travelled fast?’

Aghast and bewildered at the look on her face, he fumbles in his pockets for his phone and discreetly pulls up a search engine. 

_A Luthor in Love: What We Know on the Wedding of the Season!_ greets him on the outset, posted by _The Guardian_ over three hours ago. Another quick swipe reveals a tabloid header: _Move Over Meghan, The Post_ boasts in their morning edition, _Lena Luthor is the decade’s most beautiful bride!_

 _Insider_ and _Entertainment Weekly,_ not to be outdone, both feature full spread, full-length interviews, both equally exclusive. ‘Oh, _god,’_ he sighs, so softly it hisses through his teeth. 

‘She must really love him after all,’ she shrugs, pulling her arm free from his grasp to cross them over her chest. ‘Lex called me the other day to say that she’d asked him to tell me she was sorry, but that it’d all been a misunderstanding between us. That she and James had worked things out, and that they’d still be getting married on Sunday next.’ 

She pulls her glasses off her face with a hand, wipes at her face with a sleeve ineffectually. ‘The worst part is,’ she bites her lip, fresh, angry tears springing to her eyes. ‘He sounded really sorry about it, too.’ 

‘You know how her family is,’ Clark says pressingly. ‘You can’t believe she’d really do this to you?They’ve probably cornered her, had Lex call you on her behalf. She probably doesn’t mean any of it! I doubt she even knows he called you at all!’

‘If she could do it to James, what makes me any different?’ she scoffs. She feels an upwelling of shame spring to the surface, rather dimly, at that. ‘She managed to keep it from him this long. She never felt like she owed him the truth, she couldn’t even promise _me_ anything. Who’s to say, anyway,’ she says, volume rising steadily, ‘that she wasn’t just, I don’t know, using me to get back at him? That I was, that we were only—’ she thrusts her glasses up the bridge of her nose, rubs at her wet eyes briskly, ‘—convenient, anyway. Something she wanted to get out of her system before she went and got hitched. ’

Clark regards her fixedly, his mouth pressed into a tight, pained line. ‘That isn’t fair to her,’ he says, after she’s wiped her eyes. He crosses his arms over his chest, mirroring her. ‘That isn’t being fair to her. Or to you. You’ve known her the longest, you know she loves you more than anything. More than _him,_ too, and James knows it.’ 

He fishes in his trouser pocket for a handkerchief and hands it to her gently, ‘But this time’s different, because it isn’t just about her anymore, is it? She’s got the rest of the family’s corporate reputation to think of, and L-Corp, _and_ CatCo. And, well, now, I guess, Obsidian North. It can’t be easy.’ He exhales on a long note, leaning back against the railing with a slump. ‘It can’t be easy.’

Kara’s crying quietly in earnest now, sopping her tears up messily with Clark’s small white kerchief. ‘I don’t want to be that for her,’ she hiccups eventually. ‘I don’t want to be the reason she could lose any of those things. I don’t want to hurt her anymore, I don’t want to hold her back,’ she blows her nose loudly, and shoots Clark a small, regretful look at the ruined fabric. 

‘It’s fine,’ he smiles, briefly amused. ‘But, no, you won’t,’ he continues, turning grave. ‘Hold her back, I mean. Or hurt her. Whatever happened between you two happened because she let it. You didn’t force her into anything, she wanted it, too. Wanted _you,_ too. No amount of gaslighting from anyone is going to change that. And I don’t, you know,’ he scratches at his suddenly bright-red cheek, glancing away. ‘I don’t condone cheating, or what you both did to him, but this wasn’t a surprise to me. It wasn’t a surprise to anybody, really. I only see her twice a year when we fly over, and she only ever has eyes for you. Which, I suppose, is saying something, because she was always right next to James.’

She snorts once and runs the wadded-up kerchief beneath her nose. ‘Maybe I should just move in with you and Lois,’ she laughs weakly. ‘Find a job walking dogs in Central Park, or as a keeper at a petting zoo.’

‘Oh, you’d love that,’ Clark grins and shakes his head. ‘The children wouldn’t get close enough to touch any of them with you on duty. And you’d love the Ramble,’ he nudges her with his shoulder. ‘All the lush, all the green, all the bird-watching.’ 

She leans her head against his shoulder with a sigh and loops their arms together. ‘You know, Nia was telling me about real estate her aunt was handling in Montgomery.’

Clark draws back to look at her in askance. ‘What,you aren’t thinking of moving to _Alabama?’_ he says incredulously. 

She punches him lightly on the arm, allows herself a small grin in response. ‘No, dummy—Crawford, New York. It’s a fifteen minute drive to Middletown and the I-84,’ she trails off thoughtfully, her gaze turning misty. ‘I could drive up on weekends, drop in on Lois when she finally has Jon.’

He clasps her hand on his arm firmly and ducks down to look her in the eye. ‘Are you serious? You’re seriously considering moving east after all this? Kara,’ he puffs his cheeks out, brows drawing tightly together. ‘I won’t lie to you, it’d be great, and we’d love to have you. I’d help you out, find you a new flat, a new job. But you can’t run away like this, from everything you have here.’

‘And what _do_ I have left here?’ Kara says, stepping back and shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her pea coat. ‘I just got sacked from my dream job; none of my friends will talk to me for being one-half of a homewrecking-ball; I can’t even leave my flat through the front door because somebody must’ve let something slip to the paps! There’s never less than half a dozen waiting for me on the curb, at any given time, asking if I know anything about the party. My neighbors give me hell for it.’

Clark sighs sympathetically, nodding to himself. ‘Well,’ he purses his lips, ‘what about—Lena?’ 

Kara regards him long and thoughtfully. ‘I can’t put my life on hold for her,’ she says. Her shoulders hunch forward unconsciously, disconsolately, as if burdened by a great and terrible weight. ‘And I can’t stay here and pretend everything’s alright with everyone else when all this is over.’

‘No, I get it,’ Clark nods again, a far-off look in his eyes. ‘I get it. I’d be the same way, I think, if Lois ever—’ his features pinch together at the thought. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine. I’d go mad, maybe.’ 

‘I’d save you the room next to mine at Arkham,’ she says, smirking when he guffaws in affront. 

The wind picks up anew, and the gales buffet them back down the boardwalk, past the still-closed fair and its pastel-colored saltwater taffy shops. ‘We’ll look into it together, okay?’ he tells her gently, pressing his shoulder into hers. ‘All of it—flats, keeper jobs, the works. But together.’

She squeezes his arm tightly, gratefully. ‘Thank you,’ she says, whisper-soft.

**. . .**

Lisa, from CatCo’s HR, had given her a gentle, but firm reminder on Monday morning that she only had until Thursday to remove all her personal effects from the office premises. 

Nia, distraught and tearful the second she’d answered Kara’s timid phone call, had agreed to help her clear her desk out discreetly after office hours on Thursday evening. It had come as something of a terrible, overwhelming shock, then, when she’d stepped off the elevator and walked face first into an explosion of confetti.

‘Sorry, sorry, oh, my god, _sorry—_ I never can tell how hard these things go,’ Nia mutters, fumbling with a still-smoking party popper. Kara splutters around a mouthful of crepe streamers and foil confetti, blinking up at the small crowd cheering loudly around her. 

She sees Judy from advertising waving at her from the corner, beer in hand, the other stubbornly adjusting a party hat strapped to her head; Yash and Charles from the sports news division, arm in arm by the window, tooting on gaudy plastic horns; the entire bullpen, really, from the looks of it; elderly Miss Rosa by the wall with a half-eaten cupcake in hand, beneath a wall strewn with bunting and a banner reading, _Good Luck, Kara!_ in bright neon lettering, and then, underneath that still, smaller, in Nia’s tidy, looping cursive across taped-up sheets of fax roll, _And Happy Trails!_

‘Snapper wanted to come, if you can believe it,’ Andy says, popping up from behind her to hand her a festive looking cupcake on a paper plate. ‘But he’s in a meeting with the higher-ups. I made these, by the way!’

‘Thank you,’ Kara mumbles, pushing the entire thing into her mouth impulsively in a single go. ‘S’reallygoof,’ she chokes out at Andy, mortified at the sheer volume of people pressing in around her.

‘I said you didn’t want to make a big fuss out of it, but they insisted,’ Nia says brightly, picking streamers out of her own hair. She hands Kara a paper napkin for the icing hanging in great, airy clumps along her chin. ‘And then Mike and Bruce from security downstairs sent up all this take-out, which—we think _Snapper_ paid for? So I figured, eh, what the hell, right?’

‘Right, right,’ Kara says absently, looking around at the decorations hanging about the room, the fairy lights draped over the desks and palm plants in the corners, mouth agape. ‘I—you didn’t have to—’ 

Abe Harding from editorial pushes forward towards her, shakes her hand so vigorously her glasses slide down her nose. ‘Come on, Kara,’ he says genially, nudging her to the center. ‘Let’s have a speech!’

Cries of encouragement resound across the room at that, and she’s simultaneously clapped across the back and nudged towards the massive, five thousand-gallon tropical fish tank occupying the middle of the office space. A ways off to the side, Nia cups her hands over her mouth to hoot and whoop boisterously, Andy raising both arms overhead to flash her a thumbs-up beside her. 

‘I—I, uh—’ She finds herself looking up to peer at her colleagues' warm, friendly faces, their bright, wide smiles, and feels her throat close up with a surge of emotion. The official story that Snapper and Cat had fed down the grapevine, she’d later found out, was that she’d simply burnt out after laboring under the brunt of the backlash she’d received for her last investigative article on insidious money laundering and corruption within state-funded, local detention centers. 

They’d said Kara herself had suffered something close to a nervous breakdown and requested to be relieved, that she was looking into a lengthy sabbatical to recover emotionally. Nobody at work outside of Nia, James, the Luthors, and Lisa from HR had known otherwise. 

Miss Rosa scoots closer to the edge to see her better, shoots her a gap-toothed grin. ‘I don’t really know what to say,’ she confesses with a laugh, waving off a fresh round of supportive yells. ‘I just—I can’t thank you guys enough, for everything,’ her voice breaks off, wavers, and she clears her throat quietly. The room settles in empathy, and even Judy from accounting ducks her head to wipe at growing tears. 

‘You’ve been my family for years, and years, and years. Working here, seeing all of you,’ she makes sweeping gestures at them, tries to control the trembling of her lip. ‘Seeing all of you, everyday, was the best part of my day, most days. And, I—just—thank you,’ she gives in and buries a dry sob in the palm of her hand, screws her eyes tightly closed. ‘I’ll miss you. I’ll miss all of you. Thank you. Thank you so much.’

She’s engulfed in a bear-hug in a heartbeat, friends and co-workers pressing in around her tightly, murmuring well-wishes and patting her fondly on the head, the arm, the shoulder when they couldn’t get close enough to squeeze in with the rest. 

Nia holds her closely, tucks her head tight against her shoulder, and lets her cry, and cry, and cry. 

**. . .**

Later, much, much later, when all the cake had been eaten, the floors and tables cleared, and the rest had gone home, Nia and Andy volunteer to help her wrap up all the leftovers. 

‘I can’t,’ Kara protests, pushing the take-out boxes back into Andy’s arms. ‘My lease is up by the end of the month, Monday next. Clark’s already helping me move some things out into storage, and the fridge was the first to go. You go on and take them, really, please.’

‘I mean, if you’re really sure,’ Andy trails off, glancing doubtfully at the table behind her. ‘There’s, like, an awful lot of bourbon chicken and lo mein left. Maybe we should’ve sent some home with Alan, or Bruce.’

‘You’ve got a boyfriend that eats like a fratboy, it’ll all be gone by tomorrow,’ Nia rolls her eyes teasingly, prancing away to avoid a playful swat to her backside.

Andy disappears into the pantry to fetch a fresh stack of boxes, and Nia sidles closer to her, tapping at her phone. ‘Look, my aunt’s cleaned it out this morning,’ she says, showing her several photos of the property she’d acquired on short notice with Eliza’s help. ‘Pine Bush, Crawford, something like twenty minutes from Middletown and the highway. She says the movers can start dropping things off by tomorrow, in time for you and Clark to drive in on Sunday.’

Kara nods slowly, swiping through the photos with an absent flick of a finger. ‘Okay, thanks, that’s—this is great,’ she swallows, pausing at a portrait photo of the front facade of her new home. Her new mailbox is a vibrant, brick-red. ‘This is great,’ she repeats, softer. 

Nia eyes her with concern, worrying her lip between her teeth. ‘You really aren’t going?’ she asks helplessly. Kara glances up at her, blinking in surprise, and she soldiers on determinedly. ‘To the wedding?’

‘For what?’ Kara mutters, looking back down at the phone in her hand and swiping back through the photos with renewed vigor. 

Nia throws her hands up in disbelief. ‘To, I don’t know, try to talk her out of it? Tell her how you really feel? Pull a Shrek and run down the aisle dramatically when the minister asks for objections?’

Kara hands the phone back with a sigh, shuffles in place stiffly. ‘She already knows how I feel,’ she says, tone hollow. ‘She knows, and I’ve—we’ve talked about it before, what she really feels about him. But, never what we’d really do about it, what _she’d_ do about it. She never wanted to talk about it, and we never did. And now, we won’t,’ she shrugs tiredly. ‘Ever.’

‘So, that’s—that’s it?’ Nia frowns, crossing her arms. ‘Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am? So, what was it, then? A bachelorette fling to settle her jitters? Warm up her cold feet?’

Anger flashes across Kara’s features, quick and blazing. ‘No,’ she barks, and Nia flinches at the volume. ‘No. No, look—I—I can’t keep pushing against a wall. She already knows I love her. And she’s said—she’s said she loves me. And I know it’s complicated for her, but, if she wanted me, really wanted me, she’d have done something,’ she runs a hand through her hair, blinking back tears. Nia’s eyes water in sympathy. ‘She’d have done something,’ she says again, clearing her throat with a cough. 

‘Yeah,’ Nia concedes, wiping at her face with a sniff. ‘Yeah, okay, you’re right. Ball’s in her court.’ 

Andy stumbles out of the pantry then, burdened with several plastic bags hooked around her arms. Kara turns away quickly to avoid the curious look she knows must be directed at them, wipes at her nose. ‘I’ll, uh, go help Andy carry all this stuff back to her car, and then leave a few in the pantry downstairs for the folks at finance,’ Nia calls over her shoulder at her, relieving Andy of an armful. ‘We’ll be back for the rest.’

The quiet is deafening when they leave. 

She hauls herself up to sit on her old desk for a breather, swinging her legs to and fro, and feeling small and rather sorry for herself to her quiet disgust. Her foot dislodges an empty can tucked behind the corner, and it’s then she remembers that Harrison and Abe Harding had sent up for a dozen cases of beer earlier, set the lot in empty, haphazard stacks in the conference room, and likely clean forgot all about them.

No matter, she thinks, no need for their department to miss recycling on Friday morning when the cleaners came by. She picks up the roll of bin liners Judy had left on top of her filing cabinet, tugs two free, and drags her Oxfords over to the conference room. 

She’s on her knees, reaching for empty beer cans that had rolled beneath the too-long table, when the elevator rings, unnaturally loud in the stillness. Andy had kindly offered to drop her and Nia off earlier on her way back home, and she scrambles quickly now, ducking down again to paw at another cup beneath a chair. ‘Just a second, sorry!’ she calls. ‘I’m in here, Abe left the cases, I thought maybe we could take them on the way down!’

Her head just about misses a hard clip to the crown against the table corner when she staggers to her feet, and it’s then that she notices Lena in the doorway, staring.

Lena doesn’t look quite as dumbstruck or aghast as she thinks she herself does, but the slight drop of her mouth and her slow, measured blinking, must mean she feels stunned to a degree at least. 

When Lena doesn’t make a move to speak, or even fidget, she lets the trash bag drop to her side with a sigh. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ she rattles the empty can out to her rhetorically, brushing past her when she only drops her gaze in reply. 

Lena follows her out onto the bullpen, looking dazed and lost. 

‘There’s still some chicken left, if you haven’t eaten yet,’ Kara says dryly, ignoring the dull, rapid thump of her heart pounding in her chest. 

‘I was in a meeting with Snapper and the other board members, about a possible press conference to celebrate the merger with Obsidian North,’ Lena says after a while, dropping her handbag onto an intern’s cluttered desk. 

‘Oh,’ Kara says, trying in vain to keep the trembling from her fingers while she worked on tying the bag closed. ‘Oh, good, wow, that’s—I’m—great. Happy, for you, I mean. That’s great. Congratulations.’

In her periphery, she watches Lena pace around the room to look at the last few remnants of the evening, her face falling with every step. She pauses at the banner still hanging by the wall, and Nia’s fax roll-greeting. ‘What does this mean?’ she says, a trifle too loudly. ‘What do they mean, _happy trails?’_ Lena turns to her, looking hurt and frightened. ‘Where are you going?’

Kara crosses her arms defensively, averting her gaze. ‘It’s not like I could’ve stayed on, Lena. It isn’t ethical. And,’ she swallows, ‘James talked to HR, so HR talked to me. They let me go. Cat wrote me a recommendation.’

Lena frowns deeply, looking more worried by the second. ‘Is that even legal?’ she demands. ‘Can he do that?’

Kara shrugs, packs the bag in compactly with her hands. ‘He already did.’ It’s almost amusing, seeing the naked indignance flit across Lena’s face at that, her pale hands balled up tightly at her sides. 

‘I’ll go down to HR tomorrow myself,’ Lena says hotly. ‘Make them take it back. I’ll talk to Cat about this, it’s unacceptable, unprofessional behavior, and I _won’t—’_

Kara sighs, not for the first time that evening. ‘Just drop it, Lena, please. It doesn’t even matter anymore. Besides, Clark says he’ll help me find something else, he knows somebody at the _Daily News.’_

It’s enough to give Lena pause, and she freezes, features tightening with every passing second. ‘The _Daily News,’_ she repeats, glancing back at the banner beside her, gaze flicking down to Nia’s large, looping scrawl. _‘The New York Daily News.’_

_And Happy Trails!_

‘You’re leaving?’ she whispers, and Kara’s heart sinks low, right down to her stomach, at the sight of her tears pooling at the corners of her eyes. 

Kara turns on her heel, storms off towards the pantry with the bag. ‘Don’t do this,’ she huffs angrily, more to herself than anything. Her own tears rise to the surface, and she wills them back through sheer force of will. ‘Don’t do this, you can’t do this.’ 

Lena trails after her, red-faced. ‘Were you even going to _tell_ me?’ she fumes. ‘Or were you just going to send me a postcard after you’d moved to the other side of the _country_?’

‘It doesn’t concern you,’ Kara fires back, shoving the bag down the chute forcefully. _‘You_ won’t even talk to me anymore!’

A heavy blush blooms across Lena’s cheeks, and she drops her eyes briefly. ‘I couldn’t let them catch me trying to talk to you,’ she says. ‘But I wanted to. I wanted to, Kara. I did.’

‘You couldn’t even tell me to my face that you were marrying him anyway,’ Kara says furiously, advancing on her steadily before checking herself at arms-length. ‘You had _Lex_ call me!’

Lena slams a hand down against the table so hard it sends the plastic cups tumbling back to the floor. ‘What was I supposed to say?’ she says, scrubbing at her face. _‘Sorry, Kara, I can’t do this after all, my hands are tied?’_

‘That’s a start,’ Kara retorts, gesturing wildly. ‘You had him tell me you thought it was all a mistake. That you didn’t mean to lead me on. When you could’ve,’ she curls her fingers into a tight fist, feels her nails bite into her palm. ‘When you could’ve just told me you didn’t love me anymore yourself.’

Lena’s shoulders sink, ashamed, her arms folding across her stomach. ‘I told them what they needed to hear,’ she admits. ‘You know that doesn’t make it true.’

Kara closes her eyes at the admission, feels guilt, white-hot and thick, simmer in her chest for feeling some measure of relief. ‘Then what do you want? What do _you_ need to hear?’ she asks, squaring her shoulders. ‘What do you want me to say? That I’ll stay? Be your mistress?’ Lena flinches. ‘Watch you build a life, a family with him, for show? Come with you to watch your kids’ showcases on weeknights he can’t? Have you come home to me every other night, listen to you try to convince us both it’s me you really love anyway? That none of it matters?’

She points a finger at Lena, infuriated and frustrated beyond belief. ‘Except it does, Lena,’ she finally shouts, shoulders shaking. Her tears fall freely, heedlessly, her grief eclipsed by the depth of her rage. ‘It does, because I can’t. I _can’t_ do that, I can’t do that to you, to me, to him, to your—both, you—your _children._ We’re hurting so many people. We’d hurt so many people. And I can’t do that.’ She pulls her glasses off, buries her face in her hands. ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t wait for you forever.’

A warm hand touches her shoulder, her back. ‘It’s okay,’ she hears Nia murmur, ‘it’s okay, it’s just me, let’s go home.’ She lets herself be led away, trembling and weeping, towards the elevator. 

‘Kara,’ she hears Lena cry, stumbling after her. ‘Kara, please, come back, please,’ Lena calls, incoherent through her own sobs, ugly and loud and ringing. ‘Please, let’s talk about this. Please don’t leave me,’ she cries, Andy’s soft, reproachful murmurs rising over her pleading. 

Nia pulls her through and into the elevator, arm around her shoulders protectively. Her head turns a fraction, and she catches sight of Nia nodding tersely at Andy, the other tugging Lena back forcefully with an arm about her waist. ‘Please don’t leave like this, I’m so sorry,’ Lena all but screams, straining against Andy’s grasp. ‘I’m so sorry, please let’s talk about this. Don’t leave like this. Please don’t leave.’ 

But then the elevator doors slide closed, and her knees give out beneath her. ‘You’re okay,’ Nia reassures her firmly, squeezing her tightly around her shoulders even as she dry heaves and keels over, heartsore, and winded, and hysterical. ‘You’re okay. You’re okay.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Seven: In which Clark figures, this—on the night of—is how it all must end. 
> 
> Clark throws hands! Kara finally gets it! Lena is—Lena, what is u doin' bby girl
> 
> also, some interesting points of contention were made in chapter four, and while i’d hoped chapter seven would eventually shed light on them in part, if you’ve had the same misgivings, or feel like looking into them a little earlier, you can [ over here.](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JGFveJeJSx2C3eRvvD7VcElpwvF0ZbA5/view?usp=sharing)
> 
> and just in case you feel so inclined, you can also track updates, moodboards, queries, and more on tumblr on the [#hte au verse tag!](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/tagged/hte-au-verse)
> 
> please let me know what you thought! and then come say hello and drop me a line on [tumblr](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/), or on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/subtleanarchist) Have a great week ahead! x
> 
> **. . .**
> 
> p.s. Tom Welling’s earnest, guileless, soft-smiley Clark would’ve been so good to our Kara, and you just know Smallville-Lois would’ve been just as doting, just as sweet, _swoon._ (i’ve always imagined Cavill as his jaded, hardened, cynical counterpart a couple of decades down the line, with nearly more than a hundred cross-universe battles behind him? but i digress)


	7. the way you look tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clark figures, this—on the night of—is how it all must end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the jazz band amalgamates Sinatra’s [jaunty, timeless classic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82_JCboW69U) with Bennett’s [softer, more tender ballad,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx3SPsH9AMQ) but at the end of the day, it’s Astaire’s [original rendition](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsALgi5yM_A) that Kara spins Lena around to in her kitchen at the end of a long work day, _Swing Time!_ playing soundlessly in the background while popcorn goes off in the oven.

Halfway through the I-5, Clark asks, very quietly, if she wouldn’t mind his taking the next exit to stop by the rehearsal dinner. 

Kara feels her heart leap to her throat at the thought, her breathing suddenly turning labored and strained, hitching stiltedly in her chest. ‘They don’t have to see us,’ he says, drumming his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. ‘And they don’t want to either, obviously. But,’ he purses his lips together with an awkward little grunt, ‘Jimmy’s— _was—_ my oldest friend.’

It’s then she understands, suddenly, and with a flash of quiet enlightenment, that he had only asked for her. He was giving her some form of resolution before she fully closed the chapter behind her—closure, paltry and simple. A proper goodbye. 

‘Yeah, okay,’ she says anyway, and he smiles at her gratefully, signalling right without hesitation. He reaches over the center console to take her hand, and she squeezes back tightly. 

_Harper’s Bazaar_ and _The Mirror_ had gotten wind of Saturday evening, the night of, and promised full spread photos of what was likely to be an entirely lavish, lively affair. It was, as _The Daily Mail_ later reported, the Olsens’ ostentatious thanksgiving for the Luthors’ claim on the Beverly Wilshire as the wedding venue the following morning.

(They had insisted on the offer, and Lionel Luthor had apparently graciously accepted on Lilian’s skeptical behalf, even if it hadn’t made so much as a dent in their thirteen million dollar preparations in comparison.)

Clark deposits her close to the side-entrance nearer to the ballroom, a ways from the imposing lobby and the lush greenery lining the walkway. ‘Don’t get caught,’ he reminds her sternly, glancing behind her with apprehension. ‘I’ll park around the corner, near the Arby’s out front. See you in fifteen.’ 

The walkway led down to the beachside embankment, winding around the imposing poolside, before sloping down into the ground-level ballroom. She would’ve stuck out like a sore thumb had anyone caught her ducking and weaving through the green, dressed in a thick, baby blue cable-knit sweater and a pair of off-white canvas sneakers. 

A fine rain begins to mist the night air, and she makes for shelter by the hallway, right by the great glass windows spanning the length of the ballroom. It was late in the evening, well after nine, and the toast hadn’t even been so much as raised. 

Several guests had passed her by on their way to the open bar on the opposite end of the hallway, sending her embarrassed, well-meaning smiles, likely thinking she was merely a curious hanger-on wandering the events venues on the floor. 

She tugs at the hem of her sweater self-consciously, steps closer to the glass doors by the registration table. An assistant, she thinks, eyes her inquisitively and sidles over next to her, glancing down at the tablet in his hands. ‘Party of the groom?’ he cocks a brow. ‘Or the bride?’

Kara shakes her head quickly. ‘Oh, no,’ she stammers. ‘I just—I was just looking.’

It seems to pacify him, at any rate, because he nods at her and glides back down the long table to sip at a mimosa. 

Somewhere inside, the band starts up a slow, melodic jazz tune—Dean Martin, she thinks—and she sways in place unconsciously, humming along. 

She catches sight of Lena almost immediately, immaculate in a floor-length, off-shoulder, navy blue number. She watches as Lex saunters towards her to sling an arm around her shoulders. He pivots them both to introduce her to an elderly woman who seizes her gamely by the arms, kissing her warmly on both cheeks. 

‘Kara, what are you _doing_ here?’ somebody groans behind her, and she staggers back in shock. Sam looks around her quickly before tugging her down the hall, closer to the lobby. She seats them both near the grand piano, backs to the open space behind them. ‘You can’t let them see you,’ she hisses, leaning closer to be heard. ‘James upped the security around the ballroom. Not even the press was let in.’ 

‘I wasn’t going to do anything,’ she protests. ‘Clark just—I wanted to see her. Not,’ she clarifies firmly, ‘to, you know, talk to her. Clark and I, we don’t— _I_ don’t want her to know I’m here. I just wanted to see her.’

Sam looks at her pityingly, brushes her hair back with a sigh. ‘I wish things turned out differently for you both,’ she says, swallowing hard. ‘You have no idea how much she misses you.’

There’s nothing to say to that, Kara thinks, so she doesn’t volunteer anything further, spreads her hands out against her jeans instead. A few more guests pass them by on their way to the open bar, and it’s only when Lex himself steps out of the room, tugging self-consciously at his bowtie and dabbing at the sweat on his brow, that Sam seems to come to, springing to her feet and grabbing her hand. 

‘Let’s get out of here,’ she says, turning her face away from him. The paved walkway winds around the side of the ballroom, and Sam tugs her towards the designated smoking area off to the back. 

The area is closed off, the glass doors behind them locked shut. Half concealed by the darkness, and half by the sheer denseness of the foliage about them, Sam sinks down on the stone bench with a sigh. 

‘Lionel Luthor, Lex tells me, goes through two soft packs a day,’ Sam prefaces, by way of explanation. She nods towards the curtained, locked doors. ‘But Lillian can’t stand the smell.’

‘And Lillian always gets her way,’ Kara mumbles, kicking her legs out in front of her. Sam studies her intently for a beat before rifling through her clutch. 

Kara watches, bemused and awed, as she produces a small, slim case, the gold sheen catching the light with a glint. Sam flicks the clasp open with practiced ease, revealing a half-dozen, jet black roll-ups, and holds them out to her. 

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Sam pouts, thrusting the case up at her insistently when Kara demurs, shaking her head. ‘You’ll let her stick her tongue in your mouth, but not a personally hand-rolled, premium Russian?’ 

‘At least she won’t kill me,’ Kara snaps, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. 

Sam tosses her head back and laughs. ‘That,’ she snickers, wagging a finger at her, ‘remains to be seen.’ She shakes the case again enticingly, and Kara rolls her eyes, gingerly plucking a roll free with the tips of her fingers. 

‘What d’you think?’ Sam asks, and Kara exhales slowly, going cross-eyed in her attempt to watch a plume of blue smoke erupt in a long, unbroken stream from the end of her own nose. 

‘It’s not so bad,’ she relents, suppressing a deep, coarse cough rumbling in her chest. ‘It’s just—bitter.’ 

‘No, not—’ Sam flaps a hand at her, and it’s then she looks up to follow her gaze, past a surreptitious parting in the curtain, where it lies fixed on Lena—mingling in the middle of the room and surrounded by a gaggle of people—and James, hovering like a shadow behind her. ‘What do you think?’ Sam muses, taking a long, deep pull on her own spliff. ‘Is she happy? With him?’

Kara stubs out the burnt end on her sole with more force than necessary. ‘It doesn’t matter what I think,’ she says flatly, flicking the filter towards the ashtray beside her. ‘She’s made that very clear.’

‘No,’ Sam draws the word out, chewing on her bottom lip. ‘I don’t think she has. She can’t afford another scandal,’ she continues, murmuring as if to herself. ‘She can’t stop thinking about it. She might own CatCo, but James is still acting CEO, and the Olsens are one of their largest shareholders.’ 

Kara looks up at that, startled. ‘Isn’t Cat chairwoman?’ she frowns. ‘Ten percent, outstanding; doesn’t that count for anything?’

‘Not when the stakes are something close to thirty-percent of the Olsens’ entire equity portfolio it doesn’t,’ Sam scoffs, holding a hand up to quell Kara’s disbelieving squeak. ‘You forget, up until last year, Obsidian North represented their biggest holding; forty billion since the market bottom last March. Now that Lena’s sealed the merger, that brings the count up to, what—eighty-eight, eighty-nine million additional shares? It sent Berkshire Hathaway _reeling.’_

It’s enough to knock her well over, and she absorbs the figures like a blow, head swimming. ‘But, Lena— _L-Corp—_ still represents the Luthors’ top holding,’ she protests, after a beat. ‘And Lena wo—’

Sam’s face falls, and Kara’s heart sinks right down to her stomach in growing apprehension. ‘The Luthors didn’t list L-Corp as an institutional shareholder for Obsidian North. They—’ her brows knit together in ill-concealed fury, _‘—Lillian—_ made Lena acquire it: under CatCo.’

Something inside her twists, clenches, yawning open like a maw. ‘And Lena owns CatCo,’ Kara says slowly, quietly, and Sam’s face softens in resignation when she turns to look at her. ‘Solely.’

All of a sudden, a light goes off in the back of her head, her hand coming up to touch her mouth, featherlight, in shock. ‘The ghost transactions,’ she says, and Sam’s lips purse tightly together. ‘Under L-Corp’s alleged shell companies. It was a buyout, in stages.’ Her breathing grows stilted at the memory of that morning, the faint, bruise-like circles beneath Lena’s eyes; the weary, defeated slump to her shoulders. ‘That wasn’t a fallout, was it?’

‘There wasn’t one,’ Sam relents eventually, tapping ash off the end with a careless flick of a finger. ‘Lena made sure of that. Fortunately for Lillian, if there’s one thing years of frustrated finishing school’s drilled into her golden girl, it’s how to clean up a good mess.’ 

The growing, deepening pit in her gut pulls up taut, coils tightly back upwards; a frisson of fear shoots through her like a bolt. ‘They’re stock parking,’ she whispers, thunderstruck. ‘Lillian, the Olsens—they’ve made CatCo the third party. Obsidian’s a collusion.’ 

‘With a three-figure, billion-dollar market cap,’ Sam sighs. ‘It’s too red, too conspicuous to tag as a holding; Lex knows it. Lionel knows it. ’

‘That’s fraud,’ she hisses; she hears her voice tremble. ‘It’s a felony!’

Sam throws her a sharp glare. ‘Only if you get caught. And I’m sure you can guess who they’ve listed as insiders,’ her jaw tightens, a muscle jumping at her temple. ‘But, they won’t let it come to that. Not when they already hold eighteen percent, outstanding,’ beside her, Kara starts to shake. ‘There was no way the merger wasn’t pushing through. There’s no way _this_ merger,’ she nods at the door, past the parting through the curtain, where James is deep in conversation with Benjamin Lockwood, an arm around Lena’s waist, ‘isn’t pushing through.’

Kara watches as she smokes the roll down to the filter wordlessly, firmly declining a second offered to her. ‘You know, she told me you were leaving,’ she shrugs, clicking her lighter closed. The tip of her spliff flares a dull, cold red, her cheeks drawing taut. ‘She knocked on my flat Friday morning, just past one. Had a breakdown in my foyer. We didn’t even make it to the couch.’

Kara clenches her fists in her lap, feels her tears gathering stubbornly, pooling, and then spilling unchecked and helpless down her face. Lena’s pleading screams had bled through the elevator doors even as they slid shut that evening, echoing hauntingly in her ears the entire ride home.

A troubled frown crosses Sam’s features at the memory, her brow crinkling in distress. ‘I said—I told her she should leave him. If she loved you, really loved you, then it wasn’t fair on anyone. On her, or you, or him.’ 

She cups her hands around the smoldering end, puffs once, twice, until the tip glows a bright orange. ‘Told her she’d regret it for the rest of her life if she let you leave. Told her I thought you two were meant for each other, honest to god,’ Sam grimaces. ‘And you know what? She said the same thing. That she’d waited her whole life to love someone like you. For someone to love her the way you do.’

Kara’s features crumple in anguish at the confession, her heart throbbing dully in her chest. 

‘But,’ Sam’s face grows grave, almost sorry, resigned. ‘She said she couldn’t. Leave him, I mean. And not because she loves him any better.’ She lets out a furious snort, shaking her head angrily. ‘She’s a coward, Kara. She _is,’_ she cuts Kara’s noise of protest off, waving dismissively at her. ‘She wanted to have her cake and eat it, too.’

Kara wipes at her nose with a sleeve, knocking her glasses askew. ‘There’s so much on the line,’ she concedes, and Sam shoots her a look of mingled pity and disgust. ‘There’s so much she has to consider. I don’t think a life with me would be worth half the trouble it’d bring her, not when she stands to lose so much,’ she says, her voice breaking. 

‘I love her, too, Kara,’ Sam says evenly, even as her face flushes with anger. ‘You think I didn’t think of that either? You think I don’t want what’s best for her? Fuck you, of course I do,’ she snaps her slim gold case closed, slams it down against the bench between them. ‘But you have to stop making excuses for her. And if she marries him tomorrow, that means _I’m_ going to spend the rest of my life watching her pretend to be deliriously happy every day of hers, to please people who don’t even give a shit about her.’ 

She sticks her middle finger in the direction of Lilian Luthor, standing close to the stage, before rising primly from her seat.

‘Where are you going?’ Kara asks timidly, standing herself in clear concern when Sam makes for the locked doors. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you, come back, please.’

Sam knocks once, twice, three times against the glass, concealed by the curtain. It parts just enough to reveal Jess’ head, popping out quickly to peer at her in answer. The lock clicks open, and Sam sticks a foot through the sliver of space it permits. 

‘I didn’t get her a present yet,’ she explains over her shoulder. ‘So I had Clark bring it to me instead.’ 

She watches with increasing horror as Sam strolls towards Lena, who—in a rare moment of solitude—was leaning, alone and rather wearily, against a pillar by the corner, her back to them. 

It would’ve been far more prudent to have left, she’ll think later, in hindsight; to have turned tail and fled, like she and Clark had stressed, at the first sign of discovery. But, as it stands, it all happens far too quickly: she watches, with a resigned sort of helplessness—and, to her shame, anticipation—as Sam lowers her head to whisper in Lena’s ear.

Her breath catches in her throat as Lena swivels about in stunned surprise, grabbing her by the arms and whispering urgently in response; she turns in place, gaze frantically combing the crowd—

And then, their eyes meet. 

And time seems to slow. 

Lena’s eyes widen, water, and then: she’s moving—weaving quickly through a veritable sea of people, gaze unbroken, unblinking, as if terrified Kara might disappear altogether if she so much as turned her head. 

She squeezes through the crack Sam had just slipped through, and all too soon, she’s standing before her, pale, and beautiful, and real. Lena allows herself a second to take her in, her tongue flicking out to wet her bottom lip in a show of nerves, throat bobbing with hesitation. 

And, then—‘Kara,’ she whispers, and a floodgate seems to break inside her at that, and she launches herself forward and into Kara’s arms, face pressed tightly to her neck. ‘Oh, _Kara,’_ she cries, trembling and clutching tightly to her shoulders, her head, body wracked with heaving sobs. 

She takes Lena’s face in her hands, pulling back to drink her features in— her flushed, tear-lined face; her pristine updo unfurling in long, curling strands at the temple—and kisses her full on her warm, red mouth, open, and frantic, and desperate. 

Lena sinks into her embrace with a sigh, pulling her closer. ‘I thought you’d left,’ she whispers wetly against Kara’s mouth, fingers touching the shine of her lip. ‘I thought you’d left me without saying goodbye.’ 

‘I couldn’t,’ Kara confesses breathlessly, kissing her harder. ‘I couldn’t, Lena.’ 

Lena leans into her as if intoxicated, nudging at her cheek with her nose. ‘But, you will, won’t you?’ she says, and it isn’t a question. 

Her tears run hot, run freely, down her pale, grief-stricken face, and Kara brushes them away tenderly. ‘Lena,’ she says gently, thumbing at her cheeks. ‘You know I can’t stay.’

A look of utter resentment flits across Lena’s face, her eyes suddenly alight with a cold anger. ‘That doesn’t mean you have to go!’ she exclaims, livid. She attempts to free herself, struggling half-heartedly in her arms, but Kara’s hold tightens around her comfortingly.

‘You don’t have to marry him,’ Kara says, entreating. It’s empty of all substance, and they both know it, but it draws fresh tears to Lena’s eyes all the same. Her lips brush the curl of Lena’s ear, and she leans into the touch. ‘Please don’t marry him. I could make you so happy. I’d spend the rest of my life trying.’ 

‘You wouldn’t have to,’ Lena runs a hand along the line of her jaw, nosing at the hollow of her throat to avoid looking at her. ‘You already do.’

If there were any other options well in her power to exhaust, she would’ve employed them already, Kara knows, but from the way Lena slumps against her with a heavy, uncharacteristic sort of helplessness, she understands there’s nothing left for it.

‘What’ll I do without you, Kara?’ she mumbles into her shoulder, genuinely terrified. She slackens in Kara’s arms even further, fingers gripping her back tightly. ‘I need you. You’re my best friend,’ she shudders, and her face, when she presses it to Kara’s neck, is wet. ‘The love of my life.’

A lump hardens in Kara’s throat at that, and she closes her eyes, breathing deeply to compose herself. ‘It won’t always be like this,’ she promises, squeezing Lena’s waist. ‘We’ll figure it out someday, when this all dies down.’ She daren’t add that it feels as false a platitude as any, and Lena seems to agree, with the way her head hangs a little lower in reply. 

‘Now, do stop, please. Don’t want your make-up to run,’ she says firmly, leaning back to wipe at Lena’s face with the cuff of her sweater. ‘Or the tabloids will cotton on, and then I’d really never live it down, because then there’d be printed proof of the time some idiot wasted an entire evening making you cry.’

Lena snorts in spite of herself, but runs a delicate finger beneath each eye anyway. ‘Well, how else are you supposed to remember me?’ she chuckles, sniffling wetly. ‘If not jilted, and lost, and utterly heartbroken?’

It makes her heart ache, truly, to see Lena so downhearted. But, she’s also never been quite so lovely, standing as she is before her, half-bathed in the hazy orange glow of the garden lamps hanging above them. 

‘Beautiful,’ Kara says, and means it, more than she’s ever meant anything her entire life. She lifts Lena’s chin with a gentle hand, studying her features so intently, so tenderly, Lena blushes under the attention. ‘Kind,’ she says, leaning down to touch the tips of their noses together. Lena’s gaze shutters at her proximity, her lids sliding closed. ‘Worthy,’ she murmurs against her mouth. 

Inside the ballroom, the jazz band kicks up with a jaunty crash of brass. The haunting, melodic refrain of the sax drifts towards them, and it’s a song Kara knows by heart, having spun Lena around in the kitchen enough times to it while the popcorn rumbled in the microwave, Fred Astaire plinking away at the piano in her living room television. 

It’s enough to give Lena pause in her arms, and she burrows her face into Kara’s chest, overcome with an upwelling of emotion at the sentiment. Kara finds herself smiling against the shell of her ear, the curl of her lips stretching into a fond grin. 

‘Maybe we really are meant for each other,’ she says amusedly, clasping Lena’s hand in hers and swaying them both into a slow, stationary waltz. ‘If they’d really let us have this, just the once.’

Lena turns her head, her cheek pressed against the soft wool of Kara’s collar. She makes a small noise, and Kara steels herself for a jest, a mock-scathing quip to lighten the gravity of the moment. 

But—‘It’s our favorite song,’ Lena says instead, in a small, devastated voice that breaks at the end, and Kara’s heart twists with a forceful wrench. 

‘I know, sweetheart,’ is all she manages to choke out in reply, resting her cheek against the top of Lena’s head with a soft, weary sigh. ‘I know.’

**. . .**

Clark finds them like that shortly after.

He imagines he can almost hear, even from a distance, Kara singing along softly in her ear to the old Astaire song fading in the background— _There is nothing for me but to love you,_ a lilting, displaced refrain, _and the way you look tonight_. 

It seems almost a shame to part them so abruptly, but the panic in his chest flares like a spasm, and he clutches at the stitch in his side. ‘Kara,’ he gasps, breathless from the run, ‘Kara, we have to go. Morgan Edge saw me, he’s gone to get James.’

Lena pulls away slowly, reluctantly, cradling Kara’s face with her hands. Sam stumbles out from behind the curtain beside him, looking just as harried. She nods at him meaningfully after a quick glance behind her reveals no immediate threats. ‘Kara,’ he ventures insistently, ‘let’s _go.’_

The anguish on Kara’s face communicates itself to him so painfully he lowers his gaze. The finality of their separation had descended on them both in full, and it was tearing her apart so plainly their tears had all but stoppered. 

She presses a deep, urgent kiss to Lena’s palm, leaning into it for a moment. ‘Lena, I love you,’ she whispers, peering desperately into her face as if to commit her to memory, and Lena surges forward to kiss her fiercely. 

‘In every lifetime,’ Lena whispers softly, touching their foreheads together. ‘And the next.’

The band suddenly stops, mid-set, and the volume of the indignant partygoers inside rises in contrast. A compact two-way radio clipped to Sam’s hip crackles to life with a rasp of static, and a gruff voice orders a sweep. 

‘Lena,’ Sam says, grabbing her hand insistently. ‘Come this way.’ 

Somewhere, deep inside the ballroom, they hear James roaring orders to security—‘I know you’re in here. I know you brought her with you,’ he bellows, _‘Clark!’—_ and the raw vitriol in his cry is enough to kickstart them all into action. 

And this, Clark figures, pushing Kara to a run ahead of him, is how it all must end. 

And what a life it must be, he thinks, truly, to spend it looking over your shoulder through all its pitiable entirety. 

Not to see how far ahead you’d pulled from everything coming after you, but—and here, he clocks Kara sprinting up front, craning her neck every once in a while to glance back with wet, red-rimmed eyes—for a fleeting glimpse of everything you’d left behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Eight: In which Lois decides everyone has had enough, and Kara uncovers a startling revelation.
> 
> just in case the technical jargon was a bit too difficult to keep track of, i wrote a brief guide to what went on behind Sam and Kara's discovery, which you can [read here! ](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Abj5DtxWLshV-AnGabPzI1Ev4g5ZT0kV/view?usp=sharing)
> 
> but, in case you don't feel like reading a paragraph about it—although, if you still haven't fully wrapped your head around the gravity of the events this chapter, you probably ought to give it a go!—tl;dr in a nutshell, stock parking is incredibly illegal and involves clandestine third-party deals to hide transactions from SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) regulation. it's fraud. you do it to manipulate the market, which—in the world of stocks and trading—is practically unforgivable. and a felony.
> 
> you can read more about [stock parking here](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/parking.asp), and about the repercussions and consequences of having a major shareholder—read: potentially, the Olsens—[withdrawing stocks here,](https://smallbusiness.chron.com/happens-shareholder-leaves-company-31018.html) if Lena's reticence is still isn't as clear. 
> 
> but, really, friends, give this [little author's guide](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Abj5DtxWLshV-AnGabPzI1Ev4g5ZT0kV/view?usp=sharing) a go if you've got pressing questions this chapter! or, you can shoot me an Ask on [tumblr](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/)
> 
> see, the most comforting thing about hitting rock bottom—and we! thankfully! finally! have! god’s honest truth!—is knowing that there’s only ever one way left to go, and that’s up, bless. take a breath, friends: we’re all about Supercorp endgame excellence in this house. 
> 
> you can also track updates, moodboards, queries, and more on tumblr on the [#hte au verse tag!](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/tagged/hte-au-verse)
> 
> please let me know what you thought! and then come say hello and drop me a line on [tumblr](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/), or on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/subtleanarchist) Have a great week ahead! x


	8. all the lonely people

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lois decides everyone has had enough, and Kara uncovers a startling revelation.

They’re at the parking lot of the Galleria, Crystal Run, picking at cartons of bourbon chicken from the open trunk of their Sorento rental, when Clark hands her a box.

‘I made a quick stop while you were looking for cereal, back at Sam’s Club,’ he says, wiping a hand on his pant leg to lift the lid for her. She fishes out a black Samsung gingerly, turning it over in her lap. ‘I put my number in already,’ he rubs at the back of his neck.

She unlocks the screen with quick, deft swipes, exhaling a soft sigh of relief at the empty contacts list. ‘You have to promise me,’ she says, fixing him with a look so grave he swallows reflexively. ‘Promise me that no matter what happens tonight, you won’t tell me about it.’

‘If that’s what you want,’ he nods, squeezing her arm. ‘But I don’t know how long you can hold it off, if it finds its way into the news on its own anyway.’

She shrugs, tucks the phone into her coat pocket. ‘It’s not like I’ve got cable,’ she says. 

‘And Alex?’ Clark hedges. ‘What do we tell Alex?’ 

She springs to her feet, reaching into the paper bag beside him for a pack of Twizzlers. ‘Tell her—’ she squeezes the bag between her hands, pulling at the ends until it pops open at the seam. 

A quiet little hum escapes her as she taps the candy stick against her lip, ‘—tell her I’m okay.’

**. . .**

Clark heads back to Metropolis two weeks later. 

For as long as she’d needed his help settling in, he’d gamely occupied the guest room down the hall at Lois’ insistence, opting out of the daily two hour-commute it would’ve taken him to see her everyday.

To his surprise, Kara had declined his connections at the _Daily News_ for the time being; she’d come home one Thursday evening, burdened with boxes of Capri Sun, and announced that she’d been employed by the Walden Public Library as an assistant for thirteen-fifty an hour. 

True to his word, Kara hadn’t heard a single word regarding the wedding from him, and nothing in his face ever gave him away. Crawford was a quiet, sleepy little town miles from any major cities, and the relative privacy her home offered ensured freedom from any possible discussions on celebrity gossip.

He’d bundled her up into a bone-crushing hug just before he’d left, lifting her clean off the ground. ‘Promise me you’ll text me every week at least, just so I know you aren’t rotting in the basement after a fall or something,’ he’d mumbled plaintively. 

‘You worry way too much,’ she’d grunted, laughing. ‘I won’t even notice you’re gone!’

‘We all do,’ he said seriously, drawing back. ‘Worry, I mean, for you. That’s what family’s for. And, well, friends. And all of them, back home—they miss you, Kara. They worry everyday.’ He’d looked her over quickly one last time, his gaze sweeping frantically from her face down to her heels. ‘If you ever need anything, call me, you promise?’

She’d rolled her eyes at him, squeezing his arms affectionately. ‘Yeah, okay, _dad,_ I will.’ 

He’d wrapped her up in a last hug, and kissed her soundly on the cheek. ‘Well, here’s looking at you, kid. See you around.’

She’d waved vigorously with her whole arm as his car rumbled down the driveway, pretending to march back to the porch with wide, exaggerated steps as he frowned teasingly at her from the rear window. 

She’d followed him out onto the road, arms crossed gallantly over her chest, until he’d receded, pin-like, into the distance. And even then, she’d waited patiently until his Uber turned the corner street at the end of the long lane before she finally unwound her arms and let herself cry. 

**. . .**

It was one thing to curl up on a sofa with somebody at the end of the day, and another thing completely to settle in alone: the first real night she’d spent without Clark in the vicinity, she’d swaddled herself with a small mountain of blankets in the living room couch, and cried into a tub of Phish Food.

**. . .**

She sets a steady routine for herself to establish some semblance of control over her circumstances in the next while: five days a week, from eight to four, she files library cards and stacks shelves up at Walden; on Wednesdays and Saturdays, she picks up a loaf of challah at the bakery down the block after she clocks out of the library; on Sunday mornings, she drives down to the community fitness center at Goshen to do laps in the heated pool.

And then, every other evening—to their comically visible relief—she calls up Clark and Lois on her iPad to FaceTime after dinner. 

The tabloids and newspapers she sorts on a daily basis for the front racks sift through her fingers without so much as a cursory glance. In her quaint little corner of the rural upstate, no news of the Luthors reaches her, and for the longest time, the only things she bothers herself with concern the gas inflation. 

It doesn’t take long before a sense of normalcy begins to permeate her day-to-day existence. And while she still cries herself to sleep most evenings, the gaping pain in her chest blunts to a dull ache all on its own. 

**. . .**

One Saturday evening, by the end of the month, she wipes her soapy hands on a dish towel after dinner and finally adds Alex to her contacts list. 

**. . .**

Four months after she starts work at Walden she calls Clark to say she’s landed herself a promotion, and to her infinite surprise, another day job from nine to twelve on Mondays. 

‘They’ve made me a full-time librarian,’ she chortles into her phone, amused. ‘The old one, Mr Friedman, is teaching algebra full time at Pine Bush this year.’

‘Good for him,’ Clark calls out, swinging out of frame for a second to rifle through the cupboard beside him. He waves a pack of Double Stuf Oreos into the camera triumphantly. ‘Lois’ no-bake cheesecake pregnancy cravings are getting out of hand,’ he grumbles good-naturedly. ‘What’s this you were saying earlier, something about working Mondays now, too?’

‘I applied to teach crafts and painting down at the senior community center a while back, and they finally called me to say they’d be happy to have me,’ she says excitedly, drawing her legs up beneath her on the sofa. ‘They said I can start next week.’ 

Onscreen, she watches as Clark dusts the crumbs off his hands, tilting the pie tin towards her for her appraisal. He claps his hands together happily when she nods her approval. ‘Man, look at you, living your best life,’ he cries proudly, flashing her a wide grin. ‘From assistant to senior librarian in less than six months, a meteoric rise in corporate hierarchy unheard of in the industry!’

‘Stop,’ Kara laughs, both thrilled and embarrassed. ‘It came with a raise. I went from thirteen to fifteen seventy-five.’

Clark whistles softly, planting his hands on his hips to regard her fondly. ‘I’m proud of you, come on,’ he shakes his head, grinning. ‘And, I’m happy you’re happy.’

She exhales through her nose, slowly, steadily; feels a light-hearted contentment bubble inside her chest for the first time in far too long. ‘I’m happy that I’m happy, too,’ she smiles.

**. . .**

She’s sitting through an episode of _All Stars_ one evening when she thinks to send a text. 

_have you seen Snatch Game this week? premium HVAC dating tips_ —she sends it off into the ether before she can second guess herself, settling back into her throw pillows stiffly.

It takes all of her willpower to ignore the little grey check at the end of her message, and the three gray dots winking in and out of existence half an hour later. 

She polishes off two full bowls of the bowtie pasta she’d made and all of another episode of _Untucked_ before she turns in for bed. Then, just before she switches her phone off altogether, Alex’s name blinks across the top of her screen.

_i just walked sensually to the thermostat,_ her text reads, _and turned it up to a sensible 74_

She sends off two laughing emojis in reply before turning her phone off for the night. It’s the lightest she’s felt in ages, and she falls asleep cuddling her pillows with a smile on her face. 

**. . .**

She’s at the check-out counter, signing off on four non-fiction paperbacks several inches thick, when her client finally comes back from wandering the shelves, nose deep in the latest issue of _Wired._

‘I’ll just need your library card real quick,’ Kara says helpfully, priming the scanner beside her with a quick tap of her finger. 

The college student nods distractedly, tossing the card onto the counter with a careless flick of his hand. He quickly flips to another page on the magazine. 

‘You can give these back next month,’ Kara says, hefting the books over to him with a grunt. ‘If you need a little more time, just se—’

‘Man, have you seen these VR Lenses Obsidian North’s just released?’ he interrupts, holding up the page for her to see. Her stomach drops right to her feet at the sight of Lena, and another woman named Andrea Rojas, posed intimidatingly against a pristine, white background— _Welcome to the New Age,_ the headline reads, _A Glimpse into the Future with Obsidian North’s Groundbreaking VR._

She glances quickly at the second spread—a close-up shot of Lena’s face tilted to the side in profile, revealing the minute disk affixed to her temple—before she averts her eyes with an ill-concealed shiver. 

‘It’s the future of neural tech,’ he mumbles, looking back down at the page in clear awe. ‘Non-invasive, fully immersive optic manipulation. You pop ‘em in and out, like Airpods. No visceral disorientation, or motion sickness. How cool is that?’

Kara wrings her hands together behind the counter. ‘So cool,’ she says, looking everywhere but at him. ‘So cool. Okay. Great, have fun with those!’ she thrusts his card back in his arms, along with the books he’d checked out, and all but shoves him away. He turns on his heel, still reading the article on Obsidian North, and shuffles to the exit. 

Her heart pounds double-time for another half hour before it settles, slows. 

**. . .**

Alex comes over on her birthday.

Clark scrambles to his feet when the doorbell rings, but she pushes him back down onto the sofa with a gentle hand. ‘I’ll get it,’ she sighs resignedly. Beside him, Lois smiles encouragingly at her and sticks up two thumbs over her own head. 

She takes a second to breathe deeply, shaking herself out in the foyer and jumping slightly from foot to foot, before she opens the door. 

Alex’s eyes water almost as soon as they lay eyes on each other, and all her trepidation at their meeting melts away. 

Her red hair might’ve grown out over the past year, curling just over her shoulders; and her face might’ve been more lined, more careworn; but her eyes were still the same warm brown she’d spent months upon months missing. 

She watches like a deer in headlights as Alex swallows hard, shoulders trembling imperceptibly. It’s only then she seems to remember the boxes in her arms, and she holds them out to Kara tentatively. ‘It’s doughnuts,’ Alex volunteers, breathing deeply through her nose. ‘Your favorite, from that Jewish bakery back at—’

She swallows the rest of Alex’s feeble attempt at small talk in a tight hug, gently depositing the boxes onto the porch to engulf her in her arms. Her own tears bubble to the surface when Alex squeezes back, hard, sobbing incoherently into her shoulder. 

‘I’m so sorry, Kara,’ Alex hiccups eventually, snuffling into her shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry. I missed you so much.’

Kara presses her lips together hard to stem her own tears, clutches tightly to Alex’s back. ‘Me, too,’ she whispers, kissing the side of her head.

Later, over dinner, she finally learns Alex is seeing Kelly Olsen, that they’d been dating for the past year and were thinking of moving in together by spring next year. 

‘Gives you just enough time to move some things around at your place, seeing as you’ve got, what—six months?’ Lois says, eyes twinkling brightly. She lays a hand on the gentle swell of her stomach, caressing it tenderly. ‘Then you and Kelly can come see us next year, since this little one should have popped out by then!’

‘We were thinking of finding another place to settle in, maybe somewhere in Jersey,’ Alex says, fiddling with her wine glass. ‘Kelly knows a place at Port Jervis, close to the school district. Her parents aren’t happy she’s moving to the other side of the country, but,’ she scoffs to herself, sips from her glass with a disaffected air. ‘When were they ever, right?’

She’s careful not to glance at anyone when she finishes, and Kara knows it’s because Alex doesn’t want to catch her eye for obvious reasons—the very mention of the Olsens seems to stiffen Alex’s back some, her mouth pursing like she’d gone and put her foot in it. 

Clark collects himself sooner than her and Lois, and rises to congratulate her with a clap on the back. ‘This is so great,’ he crows, grinning and shaking her entire arm with enthusiasm. ‘This is so great, we can see each other so much more! East coast represent, am I right?’

Alex startles with a quiet gasp when Kara reaches over to hold her hand, but squeezes back gratefully, closing her other hand over hers. ‘Now you really can’t pretend to be too busy to come over on Thanksgiving,’ Kara cocks a brow mischievously. ‘Because we can drive over anytime just to check.’

‘It was one time,’ Alex splutters peevishly, blushing right down to her neck at Lois’ snickering. ‘We—we’d just broken up, I can’t believe you and mom even invited Maggie over, that was a low blow!’

‘And _I_ still can’t believe _she_ went anyway,’ Clark howls with laughter.

Lois holds up her glass of orange juice in a conciliatory gesture, dances a little shimmy with her shoulders. ‘Okay, well, you know, fuck her sincerely. Her loss, and obviously _your_ gain! I propose a toast to your new life here on the east coast with all the people who really love you, and,’ she twists her body to face Kara, still dancing in her seat. ‘A toast to our favorite birthday girl—who’s also started taking up therapeutic gardening, for some reason,’ she swills the juice in her glass vigorously. ‘May your tomatoes grow larger than your head.’

Clark whoops cheerfully, gamely draining his wine glass in a single go with Alex following suit. ‘Happy birthday, Kara,’ Alex murmurs to her afterward, when Clark and Lois get up to clear the table. 

She scoots closer to lay her head on Alex’s shoulder, and, between the sight of Clark and Lois bickering playfully at the sink and Alex sighing contentedly beside her, she thinks it just might very well be the happiest she’s had in a long time. 

**. . .**

The weekend before Halloween, Lois drives up to help Kara with the surplus of butternut squash she’d harvested days before. 

‘I didn’t know there’d be so much,’ Kara had immediately sighed into the phone as soon as she picked up. She sounded thoroughly put-upon. ‘I don’t know what to do with all of them. I was thinking maybe you could help me with them, and maybe, I don’t know, take some home with you? Are you a squash-girl?’

‘I eat them, if that’s what you mean,’ she’d laughed, and that seemed to settle the entire thing.

She’d offered to wait for Kara to finish up at work instead of heading straight to her home, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the building exterior had been set up with expensive-looking softboxes and reflectors; more than a dozen people, clearly dressed for a wedding, were milling about on the steps of the entrance. The photographer, she surmises, was the figure in black flitting up and down the stairs at intervals, nudging people into place.

She spots Kara by the doors, deep in conversation with—and here she stops with a hand on the rail, a wide, wry grin threatening to split her face at the sight—the bride, of all people. 

Kara catches sight of her in her periphery, waving slightly. The bride, noticing Kara’s attention had wavered, glances over her shoulder and smiles at her in greeting. ‘Sorry,’ Kara says to the bride, gesturing at Lois. ‘But, this is my, uh, sister-in-law, Lois, the one I was just telling you about. Lois, this is Pamela—she’s just gotten married, and they’re having their wedding photos taken here!’

The bride, Pamela, shakes Lois’ hand with a surprisingly strong grip. ‘Hi, just Pam is fine,’ she beams warmly. ‘I hear you’ve come to help our Kara out with the squash dilemma.’

‘I had no idea the situation had gotten so dire,’ Lois rolls her eyes teasingly. ‘Congratulations, by the way! I got married in the fall, too,’ she glances at Kara at the memory, a sheepish little grin on her face. ‘My husband doubles as a photographer, and it’s been a dream of a concept, really. We wanted to capture the way the afternoon light sort of filtered naturally through the canopy, there’s nothing like it; an autumn color palette really is something else.’

Pamela nods seriously, her eyes lighting up at the prospect. ‘Oh, _absolutely,’_ she gushes. ‘Absolutely. Harls and I, it’s our favorite time of the year for exactly the same reason. And it’s just, it’s all so _perfect_ because I got engaged a year ago today, too.’

‘Well, if you need anything else, please let me know,’ Kara smiles, taking Lois by the hand. ‘I just have to fix a few things up inside.’

‘Of course,’ Pamela dips her head delicately. ‘Thank you so much for your help with the indoor shoot earlier, hope we didn’t make too much of a mess inside.’ She flutters her fingers at Lois. ‘It was nice meeting you, too, Lois. Hope you can figure the squash thing out, Kara sounded like she could really use the help.’

Inside the library, Lois feels the warmth wash over her like a wave. ‘Ah, that’s so much better,’ she groans, unwinding the scarf from around her neck.

She sinks down onto Kara’s ergonomic computer chair behind the counter, swiveling slowly in place. ‘Wow,’ she muses, eyeing the towering bouquet arrangements by the brick walls, and the fairy lights draped over the desks and windows. ‘They really went all out, huh?’

Kara makes an enthusiastic noise of assent somewhere off to the back, where she was pulling lights down from a shelf with a step ladder. ‘Yep,’ she says loudly. ‘They came by with their planner maybe half a year ago, asked if they could possibly do their wedding photos here.’

She traipses back to Lois ensnared in a net of wires, looking like she’d come off the worst in a fight with the lights. ‘You know, they both had to catch up on some reading for grad school and met here by accident over the holidays,’ Kara says, handing off lengths of wire off her body for Lois to roll. ‘Had no idea they’d been living in the same block for years, became best friends, fell in love. Now, they’re both doctors.’

Lois whistles, long and thoughtful. ‘Good for them,’ she says, smiling. ‘I’m glad they found each other. And the redhead we’d just met, Pamela— _Pam_ —she seemed really nice, too.’

The doors suddenly swing open with a dull bang, and the photographer from earlier pokes his head through. ‘Sorry,’ he calls, dashing towards the myriad reflector sheets propped against the far wall. ‘I forgot these, won’t be a minute.’

Outside the building, they catch another brief glimpse of Pamela beside the doors, one of her bridesmaids helping to pin her veil down firmly, and another attempting—and failing, repeatedly—to touch an applicator to her bottom lip, because Pam was laughing far too hard at something, or someone, farther down the stairs. 

She was positively radiant with happiness, as if she’d been lit from the inside; her cheeks were flushed pink with delight, and when another bride came bounding up the stairs towards her, laughing just as loudly—the long train of her dress draped carelessly over an arm, the other holding her own veil in place on top of her blonde head—it was easy, at last, to see why. 

‘Doctor Quinzel,’ Lois mutters incredulously. She claps a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh at her own obtuseness, hardly noticing Kara turning to her in surprise. 

‘Yeah,’ Kara says slowly, her crooked grin betraying her bewilderment. ‘Yeah, Harley, I think she said. You know her?’

Lois runs a hand along the curve of her belly, grinning at the couple clutching at each other by the door. ‘She’s a bigwig down at Gotham, neuropsychiatrist; lobbied logotherapy in place of electrotherapy as an intervention. I ran a story on Arkham maybe over a year ago, and she was my main source. Showed me the ropes, let me sit in on a few of her famous sessions. She _did_ say she was getting married, I just always assumed it was to that other doctor hanging around her all the time, Jack-something.’

Kara shakes her head at that, a maudlin look on her face. ‘Nah, they’d been together for years before Pam proposed. They’ve loved each other a long time.’

A grunt of exertion carries over to them from the far wall—the photographer, his reflectors assembled and stacked over a shoulder, finally skitters towards the exit. He waves a quick goodbye in their direction, and closes the doors behind him. 

Beside her, Kara stares after him for a beat longer—at the great, wooden double doors he’d closed, a pensive and wistful expression on her face—before she shuffles back to the counter. 

She feels a surge of overwhelming pity and exasperation inside her, watching Kara puttering aimlessly by the tables, a weary slump to her shoulders. Clark would never let her hear the end of it, she knows, but this had gone on long enough. 

‘Okay, this has gone on long enough,’ she snaps, more than a little irritably. She crosses her arms over her chest with a huff, ignoring the deep, wounded frown marring Kara’s face at her outburst. 

‘What—’ Kara protests, offended, but Lois waves a hand to shut her up. 

‘She didn’t marry him, you know,’ she says, stern as anything, and Kara stills. ‘I mean, you didn’t, obviously, so I’m telling you now. She didn’t marry him. No one was going to tell you because you didn’t want them to talk about it, and you’ve managed to avoid any and all celebrity gossip for more than a year, but you choosing not to know was you not processing,’ she throws her hands up dramatically. ‘And it wasn’t— _isn’t—_ healthy. So, _I’m_ telling _you_ now—and you can look it up yourself if you don’t believe me—she didn’t marry him.’

She watches a multitude of emotions distort Kara’s features in the next few seconds, her face eventually twisting into a wry expression of disbelief, as if she couldn’t decide whether to cry in grief, first, or in relief. 

Her mouth opens and closes soundlessly, and she reaches behind her to steady herself against the chair. ‘How?’ she stammers hoarsely, and it isn’t a question that ought to make sense, but Lois understands. 

She takes a seat on the chair across from Kara, her hands folded together on top of the low-counter. ‘She made it as far as the lobby,’ she says softly, noting the way Kara’s knuckles whitened steadily from her grip on the chair. ‘But, she didn’t walk down the aisle. There’s a video of her whole apology to her guests and the press, you can look it up on ET, or, I don’t know, YouTube. The chaos was—’ she makes a sound resembling something like an explosion, her hands unfurling and billowing to mimic the shockwaves, ‘—Catastrophic. Pandemonium. But,’ she wags a finger up at Kara, who had gone pale as a sheet. ‘It was Lex who got her out of there. So, maybe, not such a bad egg after all. Yay, Lex.’

‘Lex?’ Kara croaks, her features contorting anew as she took it all in. 

‘Technically, Lex and Samantha Arias, her CFO. But, yeah,’ Lois slaps her palms against her lap with a relieved sigh. ‘They cleaned the whole thing up. So, good for him, I guess he really loved her after all.’ 

She fixes Kara with a genuinely pitying look, her mouth turned down at the corners. ‘You know, you could’ve found out about all this sooner if you’d just asked. But, Clark said you’d want to find out on your own anyway, once you were ready, and he respected that. But, god, Kara—you just,’ she shakes her head, brows crumpling together. ‘You were never going to be ready.’

The color comes rushing back to Kara’s face in a heartbeat, the utter devastation on her face swiftly replaced by an irreconcilable, inordinate anger. Her hands fly up to the back of her head, gripping her hair with tremendously controlled fury. ‘Then, why—’ she stutters, her voice shaking with the full-force of her suppressed rage, ‘—she didn’t tell me. If it didn’t, if you knew she didn’t—why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t you tell me—this whole time, you knew—you _knew_ —’

Kara was slowly turning a spectacular shade of puce, right down to her roots. Her glasses, askew as they were, did little to conceal the fact that she’d screwed her eyes closed so tightly her tears ran in rivulets, dripping right down her chin. She was trembling from head to foot, and seconds away from spiralling—Lois leaps to her feet in an instant, rounding the counter to reach her. 

‘Hey,’ she cries sharply, gripping Kara’s shoulders with enough force to jar her back to her senses. Kara comes to with a gasp, taking deep, gulping breaths to calm herself. ‘Hey, okay, breathe. I’m here, Kara, it’s okay. Breathe, breathe with me. It’s okay.’

‘She didn’t even try,’ Kara shudders, shockingly coherent in her distress. She digs her fingers into Lois’ forearms, curling in on herself. ‘Didn’t even try.’

And, it doesn’t—shouldn’t—make the least bit of sense, she knows, but Lois understands. 

She wraps her arms around Kara’s waist, pulling her in for a tight embrace. ‘She did, Kara,’ she says softly. ‘She went to everyone she could, asking about you, but no one knew where you were, and no one could reach you anywhere. She hounded Clark and I for months and months, even flew over here to see us—’ she feels Kara jerk in her arms at that, but she rubs her back soothingly, ‘—but we didn’t tell her. You were in such an awful place for so long, and he was scared that you’d just—break. You needed time to heal, Kara. She did, too.’

Kara lets herself sink into Lois’ arms, then; finally releases all her pent-up heartache in a muted, bone-chilling cry that brings tears to Lois’ eyes. ‘Oh, god,’ she sobs, muffling her cries against Lois’ shoulder with every shudder. ‘Oh, god, oh, god, oh, _god.’_

‘I know, baby,’ Lois whispers tearfully, stroking her hair gently, tenderly. ‘I know.’

**. . .**

That evening, long after Lois had called out to say she was going up to bed, she lays down a nest of thick comforters on the massive, sand-colored sofa in her living room and, for the first time in well over a year—heart pounding harder than a drill—types _Lena Luthor_ into her laptop’s Search engine. 

Several videos flow, ribbon-like, across the top of her screen. _Lena Luthor Calls Off Wedding,_ reads a headline beneath the first video; _Runaway Bride Lena Luthor Says ‘I Don’t!’_ and _Lena Luthor Stops Own Wedding,_ from _ETOnline_ and _Elle_ respectively a little farther down. 

She hesitates for a full minute, a finger hovering shakily over the trackpad, before she clicks on the first one: a clip eleven minutes and thirty-seven seconds long. 

In the end, she watches the entire thing twice, dragging the cursor back over to loop the video anew. No wonder the press had a field day, she thinks, mouth agape. Lena had been shaky but adamant, dithering visibly only once when she realized she’d have to address the media herself offhand.

She tracks James, grainy in the background, notes his furious features, crumpling further with Lena’s every word; the cords on his neck rigid with tension; the way he swings towards her, practically foaming at the mouth in rage when she makes to leave; and then, finally, the way Lex thrusts him bodily back towards the altar. 

The cacophony that erupts is thunderous: she watches the press leap to their feet, staggering Lena back towards the doors with a stream of endless questions; Lionel battering down the aisle to reach his daughter, adrift in a sea of frenzied faces; James shouldered protectively back towards the altar with every move to press forward, thwarted at every turn by a red-faced Lex.

The video cuts off the second Lena is led away by her security detail, Lionel trailing protectively behind her with a face like thunder. Lilian isn’t in the video at all. Or in any video, Kara notes, for that matter. 

There’s not much of a point reading any of the articles either—beyond alternately sympathizing with the jilted groom and expressing relief for the runaway bride herself for narrowly escaping a lifetime with a man plagued by anger management issues, there isn’t much to glean from them. The media had been just as dumbfounded as the rest of the wedding party at the turn of events. 

There had been more than a few articles speculating on the existence of a third party in the periphery—likely on Olsen’s end, they’d said, given the thorough hush-up job the Luthors had been rumored to be behind at the last party—but they were just as insubstantial as the few claims that declared Lena was decidedly caught in a sordid love triangle with Lex and his wife, Mercy. 

She lets the video play back a third and final time, keeping her eyes on Lena, and listening with a tender, blooming wave of awe and wonder at the strength in her voice, the vulnerability in her contrition; she lets herself appreciate at last, in full, how utterly breathtaking she is in her wedding gown, her pale back almost incandescent beneath the lights of the faux-canopy above her. 

‘I’m so sorry,’ Lena had said, her gloved hands balled into tight, quivering fists at her side. ‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t be honest with myself sooner. But, I’m trying. And I am, now.’

The laptop, afterward, is then deposited unceremoniously onto the carpet, beside the television. Her heart, her pulse, which had slowed to a slow, treacle-like thrum the longer she’d forced herself to read, is racing again, throbbing fiercer, harder than anything; she pauses at the top of the stairs, a hand clenched around the shirt over her chest, feeling it pound beneath her fingers as if straining to leap out. 

The air is shimmering with fresh promise, electric and intoxicating in its novelty, and she forces down a fresh wave of excitement, of anticipation; forces herself to remember that it had been a year to the day, and not a moment less; forces herself to accept that tens of thousands of things could change in well over half that time, feelings included. 

It takes a fair bit of effort trying to wrangle her thoughts together, to compose herself enough to regulate her labored gasps into soft, tremulous breaths. She must nearly wear a hole through the carpet in her bedroom, she thinks, from all the vigorous pacing, but in the end, she relents: she abandons her own room, crosses the hall to pad softly towards the guest bedroom.

Lois sleeps with the door unlocked, she knows, and she turns the knob quietly, slipping in through the gap without a sound. ‘Lois?’ she murmurs sheepishly, patting at the lump she thinks is Lois’ body beneath the mountain of blankets. 

She waits until the mop of strawberry-blonde hair shifts, letting out a reluctant, sleepy-sounding grunt, before she tugs on the comforter and all but leaps under the covers; she picks up Lois’ arm carefully and drapes it over her hip, huddling closer to the warmth behind her. 

‘I watched the video,’ she says, very quietly, and Lois’ arm tightens around her. She butts her forehead against the back of Kara’s shoulder and squeezes her waist.

The silence stretches long enough that Kara thinks she’s fallen asleep, but then—‘I think you should talk to her,’ she says, and Kara feels a leaden weight settle in her stomach at the thought. ‘I know you don’t think she tried hard enough after, but she did. Barely a week after the not-wedding, she went on a manhunt, talked to everyone you knew—even Eliza, in Midvale.’

Kara squirms uneasily, wraps both hands around Lois’ arm; she feels a yawn tousle the hair on the back of her neck when Lois cuddles closer, the sleep sliding slowly from her voice. ‘But you changed your number and took down your socials, and there was just no way she could’ve ever found out you were holed up here, stacking shelves at a library. Eventually she just stopped hounding everybody.’

She pulls the covers up over her nose, moves her hands to ball them in thick swathes against her face. Behind her, Lois’ breathing slows, evening out until she’s snoring softly into her shoulder. Her blood feels alive underneath her skin, charged, and volatile. But the excitement is tempered, marred with a sudden bolt of fear, and it stills her.

She lifts Lois’ arm up from her waist and settles it over her shoulders, her hand, between both of hers, tucked under her chin. ‘I’m scared, Lois,’ she whispers, and she almost prays she’s deeply asleep.

But then Lois sighs. ‘What’re you going to do?’ she asks plainly, and Kara feels the weight inside her sinking down harder, deeper, pressing her bonelessly into the mattress. And then, just as she considers that Lois may have well and truly slipped off, she says, ‘I have her number, you know. If you want it.’

The thought pins and winds her the entire night, even as Lois finally succumbs to her own exhaustion, even as the dawn’s first salmon-colored vestiges start filtering through the curtains. 

And it’s only when Lois finally begins to stir restlessly beside her, asking her quietly if she’d like a cup of coffee, does she think to feign sleep, and ultimately succeed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jujubee’s [Eartha Kitt-Snatch Game](https://twitter.com/subtleanarchist/status/1280023251146600448) on All Stars 5 single-handedly facilitating the Danvers’ sisters reconciliation, we love to see it. 
> 
> Stephen Strange said it best, but we’re definitely in the endgame now. 
> 
> you can also track updates, moodboards, queries, and more on tumblr on the [#hte au verse tag!](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/tagged/hte-au-verse)
> 
> please let me know what you thought! and then come say hello and drop me a line on [tumblr](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/), or on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/subtleanarchist) Have a great week ahead! x


	9. in every lifetime

Sunday, the week before Christmas, finds her on her tiptoes in the cereal aisle at Sam’s Club, fishing blindly for a box of Froot Loops on a shelf overhead.

Her fingers close in on the edge of the box triumphantly, just as her phone goes off in her pocket, gratingly incessant after the third time. It’s Alex’s name on the screen, and she swallows her irritation with a deep sigh before she answers. 

‘Sorry I missed your call,’ she prefaces, carefully dropping the box into her cart. ‘I’m on a grocery run, I ran out of milk.’

‘Sorry to bother you, Kara,’ a voice says apologetically, and she gives a start when she realizes it’s Kelly on the other end. ‘But Alex said to go ahead and talk to you. You’re on speakerphone, she’s making dinner.’

A year ago, she would’ve balked rather vehemently at the thought of being alone in a room with Kelly in the aftermath, fearful of her life at the hands of James’ sister of all people, but Alex had mediated their reconciliation almost immediately after their own, and Kelly, while reticent herself in the beginning, had turned out sympathetic and forgiving in the end. 

Still, she thinks wryly, there has to be a part of her that’s rightfully justified in being a mite scared all the same. ‘Hi, Kelly,’ she returns brightly, tugging her cart down the aisle. ‘It’s fine, I promise. What’s for dinner?’

‘Bolognese,’ she hears Alex sing out. She hears a pan clatter onto the stovetop, and a lightly bitten off swear. ‘Sorry, the pepper is _everywhere_ —carry on.’

‘We wanted to ask if you wouldn’t mind looking at a house an agent recommended to us this Friday?’ Kelly’s voice drops shyly. ‘We would’ve wanted to ourselves, but it’s on such short notice, and it’s the only slot we’ve been offered.’

‘Plus,’ Alex grunts into the phone; she hears the hiss of meat browning, like the low crackle of static, ‘if you think it’s a good fit, then that’s good enough for me. I’ve got a real good feeling about it, it’s close to everything. It’s only an hour or something from Clark, and only a twenty, thirty minute drive to you!’

Kara pauses by the freezer, squints thoughtfully at a pack of frozen dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. ‘Yeah, ‘course I’d love to help,’ she says distractedly, eyeing the alphabet-shaped ones on the rack beneath it, which were cheaper by a dollar-fifty. ‘Where is this again?’

‘Port Jervis,’ Kelly supplies helpfully. 

Kara nods to herself, already pulling both packs free of the icy blast fogging her glasses and tossing them into the cart. ‘Uh-huh, okay,’ she mumbles. ‘And when, again, sorry?’

‘This Friday, any time you’re free,’ Kelly prompts, and Kara frowns suddenly in dawning realization. ‘Anytime before seven, I think they said.’

 _‘This_ Friday?’ Kara repeats slowly, pulling up the calendar on her phone, even though she’d already counted up the days in her head. ‘You mean, on the _twenty-third?_ Like, _two_ days before _Christmas?’_

‘Yeah, I know,’ Alex says, sounding genuinely remorseful. ‘I know, it’s insane. But these listings go like hotcakes, you know how it is with city real estate. And I’ve got a good feeling about this one, which is a first. Please, Kara, please, pretty please,’ she can almost _hear_ Alex pouting on the other end, if she tries hard enough; Kelly must be getting the full effect, she thinks, because she hears her stifle a laugh. ‘I wouldn’t be begging if I wasn’t so desperate.’

‘She’s on her knees, leveling devastating puppy-dog eyes at the phone,’ Kelly says mock-seriously. ‘This is real stuff, Kara, it really is.’

‘Okay, okay,’ Kara relents with a chuckle, rubbing briskly at her brow. ‘Okay, I can go after my shift maybe?’

‘After is fine, Kara,’ Kelly assures her warmly. ‘Thank you so much for even agreeing to it.’

She tucks the phone against her ear with a shoulder and takes off at a quick trot down the aisle, already honing in on the array of baked goods on display at the pastry corner. ‘Yeah, okay, no worries,’ she says cheerfully. ‘Maybe send some of that spaghetti cross-country over for dinner with one of Alex’s drones or something.’

There’s a grunt, and then a long, withering sigh. ‘Looks like there isn’t going to _be_ any,’ Alex grumbles, even as Kelly tuts in the background. ‘Not unless you like your garlic done with a coal-carbon finish.’

‘I’ve heard the carcinogens give it a real kick,’ Kara laughs. 

**. . .**

Just before she clocks out on Wednesday, Alfred Crane tells her the library is to be closed from Thursday, after lunch, right up until Tuesday the following week. 

‘Day after Christmas, too,’ he says conversationally, towing a loaded cart of new, unsorted titles behind him. ‘Babs and I, we’re flying out to Minnesota to see the kids. So, Tuesday seems good. Should give everybody plenty of time to recharge from the holidays, eh?’

For the first time in far too long, she lets herself sleep in on Friday morning, dragging herself, yawning and bleary-eyed, out of bed at half-past twelve. 

The sky overhead is pale, and bleak, and overcast; she cracks open a window overlooking the back porch, her small patch of woodland, and peers up with a satisfied grin. 

‘We said five this afternoon, right?’ Kara says into the phone. Alex makes a noise of assent, clearly preoccupied with packing for their own flight out to LaGuardia that same evening. ‘Because I think it’d be nice to go for a picnic today.’

Alex snorts loudly on the other end of the line. ‘It’s a wet Christmas, Kara, only you would find something charming about sub-zero weather.’

She knocks back the last dregs of her morning brew, already scrutinizing the contents of her fridge with a critical eye. ‘It’s not raining,’ she says reasonably. ‘And it’s only forty-four out, not too bad.’

 _‘Forty-four?_ Jesus,’ Alex mutters with an audible hiss. ‘Sure it isn’t too bad, sure. Only you and Clark wouldn’t think so,’ she says sarcastically. 

‘It really isn’t,’ Kara snickers, pulling a sealed block of sharp cheddar out from beneath a plate of leftover meatballs. ‘Last night was a solid twenty-one. I slept with three sweaters on.’

‘Oh, fuck me,’ Alex groans. ‘I can’t even remember where I left my parka. Now you’re telling me I need _two_ of them.’

**. . .**

She sets out for Port Jervis a little after three, just as the weather begins to lighten considerably.

It’s more than a little odd, she knows, driving out to a cemetery of all places for lunch, but Alfred had taken her once while they’d waited for Babs up at the private school she taught at, and the view had taken her breath away. 

Her bench by the comically diminutive tri-state monument at the far end is empty, thankfully, and she all but throws herself down on it, peering excitedly over and down the railing close to her feet. 

Her breath comes out in thick, white puffs, dense enough to rival the placid tea-colored river below, curling, and eddying, and looping back in on itself, until it churned into an equally thick, white mist in places close to the opposite shore. 

She makes quick work unpacking her meager little lunch—a thick tomato sandwich on rye; a soft-boiled egg in a tiny Ziplock baggie; a plastic cup of diced peaches for dessert; and an entire liter bottle of peach Snapple beside her—laying them out on a napkin across her lap. 

The swell of the channel directly below her had taken on a dark, glassy sheen from the sky overhead, like an outpouring of tar and the glint of gloss off treacle, and she finds herself—as she has more and more often these days, admittedly—reminded of Lena, of all people: 

Lena, who, during a trip with her to Midvale many years back, had fallen waist deep in the coal-black mire of the creek at the back of her old home, trying to fish a belly-up box turtle ensnared in a plastic six-pack ring. 

Lena, who had crawled out of the muck on her hands and knees—nearly apoplectic with laughter—dropped flat on her stomach, and pulled the turtle out with a hand anyway; Lena, who had stripped to her underwear in the back porch to avoid tracking the floors with mud, and run right into a thoroughly astonished Eliza, who had a hamper under an arm. 

The very memory of Lena skidding on her heels across the floor until she’d bowled Eliza clean over, their fresh laundry launched in an arcing flurry of shirts and clean underwear over their heads, sends her into a fit of laughter so sudden, and so vigorous, and so earnest, that she keels over in place, clutching at her sides, tears streaming down her face. 

What a spectacle she’d pose to any passersby, she allows herself to consider, alone and nearly rolling across the bench in hysterics at a memory. But, the mirth fades into faint amusement, and a deep-seated wistfulness settles in its place. 

The night she’d seen the news clip of Lena all but fleeing from the altar, she’d spent the entire evening in a state of nervous panic, thinking of how best to reach out, to initiate contact. 

But, then she’d remembered the months between them, a full year in all its dishearteningly horrific depth, and she’d deflated, any vague semblance of hopefulness she’d conjured snuffed out like a light. 

‘Do you still love her?’ Alex had asked, very seriously, when they’d spoken the day after Lois had gone back home, and she’d confided the events of the night before. 

And wasn’t that the real question, she muses dispiritedly, setting her empty peach cup down beside her. She pats her coat pocket diffidently and palms a soft pack of Pall Malls, swallowing hard. 

It had been years and years then, but she remembers, clear as day: how she’d watched, completely and utterly enthralled, as Lena rolled a spliff with deft, delicate fingers the first time she’d been talked into a sleepover; the small, feeble flame she’d put up to her mouth; the soft hiss of gray-blue smoke drifting in slow, writhing circles over her head. 

She remembers Lena holding the roll-up out to her, a conspiratorial gleam in her bright green eyes; how quickly she’d been both charmed and fascinated by her cool confidence; how conscious she’d been, then, of the press of her mouth around the damp paper where Lena’s own had been; how she’d lain back eventually, her head on Lena’s lap, while her head had grown lighter and lighter with every drag. 

Lena had tilted her chin up and back, then, she remembers, had cupped a hand around her mouth as she’d leaned down. She’d screwed her eyes closed in a panic, and she flushes at the memory, thinking Lena had been about to kiss her. 

But, she’d blown a steady stream of smoke into her parted lips instead—wide eyes blown and red-rimmed, looking right down into her own—and the sense-memory of it, the bitter, acrid taste of it down her throat, makes her shake a fag loose from the box with fresh intent. 

It’s the sentimentality of it all, in part, she knows, but the first draught undoes her in an instant, a swift unravelling—the smoke, the heat of it, thin and tart on the back of her tongue, breathes life into the memory, fills her with an overwhelming urge to cry. 

And it’s madness, she chokes, or something close to it, the way she vacillates freely between the extremes of grief and good cheer, but, ‘It’s almost Christmas,’ she reasons aloud, voice wavering, just because she can. 

It’s almost Christmas, and everything— _everything—_ reminds her of Lena. 

It’d been a year, and all she could think of was Lena. 

She could hardly walk down the corner block for a Dr Pepper at the convenience store without wishing they’d run into each other, by some miracle or other, Lena hovering between aisles of Sanka and almond milk, a shy, pensive smile on her beautiful, pale face. 

‘Do you still love her?’ Alex had asked her that evening in October, earnest, rhetorical. 

And it’d always be Lena, she knew, unequivocally, inexorably—every hour of every waking day, in every month of every season, for the rest of her life. ‘Always,’ she’d sighed in reply, after a beat, and she whispers it now, softly, her eyes brimming with tears. 

There was hardly anything left she was certain of, and nothing she could bring herself to put faith in, but now, seated on a frigid wooden bench overlooking the frigid, glass serpentine curl of the river below her, she feels herself blessed with a long-coming enlightenment, a blossoming of courage. 

Her cigarette smoulders, right down to the filter, and its faint orange light throws her phone screen into relief, even as she thumbs at it deliberately, consumed by a sudden, startling burst of clarity, of equanimity. 

The message sends. 

She pulls up Kelly’s contact details without falter next. ‘I’m on my way,’ she says, clearing up her nook with a sweep of her hand. 

‘Oh, good,’ Kelly answers, sounding relieved. ‘The news said a front was coming in tonight. Could be rain.’

‘Doesn’t look it,’ she says nonchalantly, glancing knowingly up at the vault of sky, a uniform, gunmetal gray. 

She doesn’t say that a light spray, fine as mist, had already begun to fall.

She doesn’t say that it looked like it’d snow instead. 

**. . .**

The house in question is a charming Cape Cod, low, and broad, and widely gabled.

She rings up Kelly on its sweeping porch, lays an admiring hand against the brick-red stucco. ‘Well, what do you think?’ Kelly answers, giddy with excitement. ‘Is it any good?’

‘I’ve only just got here, but I think it looks fantastic,’ Kara says, enthused. ‘It’s got a great big lawn, all the way around. You could hold a party on a porch this size. But, that’s about as much as I’ve seen so far. I’ll send over some videos. Is there a key here somewhere, did they say?’

‘What do you mean?’ Kelly says, perplexed. ‘The realtor’s already there.’

‘Oh,’ she puts her face up to the glass panels around the front door, peering into the foyer. The lights are on in what must be the living room, and, further on, the kitchen. ‘Oh, okay, I guess I’ll have a look around. Call you back in a bit.’ She waits another minute, knocking intermittently, politely, but when no one comes to the door, she lets herself in without preamble. 

She turns in place in the foyer, glancing about curiously, and lets out a breathless little sigh at the sight that greets her: there was something to be said, truly, about the sheer amount of natural light in the living room, off to her left. Alex would absolutely love the sprawling bay windows, would likely think of turning them into a reading nook, right off the bat.

She pulls off her gloves absently, tugging them off finger by solitary finger as she surveys the interior in growing awe. A wide, slatted partition split the spacious living area in two; she could almost glimpse the corner of a wall piano on one end, which Kelly had said was a moving-in present left by the old owners.

‘I hope you don’t mind me letting myself in,’ she calls out loudly, wringing her gloves. ‘I got turned around on the way here. Did I keep you waiting long?’

She crosses the partition without waiting for a reply, making for the piano with keen, impish delight. 

And, then, quite suddenly, she stops. 

The partitioned half of the living area is a drawing room, equally well-lit by expansive bow windows overlooking the wide lawn surrounding the lot. 

And it’s against these windows, the fading daylight behind her casting her profile in a soft, warm glow, that she finds Lena, looking at her steadily, tenderly. 

Time must slow, and her heart stop, because it’s only when Lena finally moves, shifting her weight back, gaze unwaveringly fixed on hers, does she even notice she’s stopped breathing altogether. 

She watches, transfixed in place, as Lena threads her fingers together before her, leaning back against the window frame to regard her better. ‘Not particularly,’ she says gently. 

It isn’t an apparition, then. And it’s a voice she’s all but forgotten the timbre of in all their months apart, she knows, but it sends a low jolt through her at the sound all the same, deep in the pit of her stomach, making her teeth clench at the onslaught of memories. 

Her hair had grown out, curling far below her shoulders at the ends. There were faint, bruise-colored circles beneath her eyes, ill-concealed even through her makeup. And she was thinner, now, swallowed up in a thick, oversized cream-colored pullover, than Kara had ever remembered her being.

She finds herself wondering, caught in the paralyzing fugue of utter stupefaction, where her own tears are; the upsurge of feeling, of emotion. She had gone over every conceivable aspect of their reunion in her mind, nearly every day of the past year, drawing on every last bit of hope in all her fantasies in an effort to preserve, to nurture. 

Where, now, she thinks, appalled and bewildered, is the incandescent heat of her fury; the crushing, unrelenting pressure of her immense hurt; the hysterical release of her tears, her passion; the pent-up tension in her legs, eager to launch her toward, forward? 

In its place was a blank, all-encompassing numbness, and the crisp frigidity of her confusion seems to communicate itself to Lena at last, because her eyes begin to lower in evident hurt. 

Lena drops her searching gaze, tucks her hair back behind her ear in a timid, self-conscious gesture. ‘I didn’t marry him, Kara,’ she says, drawing a small, shallow breath. ‘They said you didn’t know.’

 _I did,_ she thinks she could’ve said, and a rush of sudden feeling envelops her at the thought. _Did you think of me?_ is a fear she wants to give voice to, to project into the grasping silence between them, terrifyingly intangible in its insecurity. _You’ve never been more beautiful,_ is a quiet, haunting truth that stuns her in its simplicity, and she feels her tension melt away at the admission, like softening wax.

But—‘You’re a realtor now?’ she finds herself saying instead, closing her mouth promptly in mortification. 

Lena throws her a look of pure astonishment at that, her own mouth falling open in shock. ‘Um,’ she swallows after a long minute, blinking up at her. ‘Um, no. No, I own this property. It’s been on the market for months, but now I’m selling it to Alex and Kelly.’

‘Oh,’ Kara replies dumbly, pushing her glasses up her nose. She makes an awkward show of looking around, spreading her hands out in front of her. ‘So, they didn’t know it was you doing the selling, you mean?’ Lena opens her mouth, likely to explain, but she bumbles on impulsively. ‘It’s—the place is great, I think it looks great, you’re serving cottagecore realness.’ 

And, _god—_ where was all this _coming_ from? she screams inwardly. What was she even _saying?_ Why was she still even talkingabout _everything_ but—

The expression on Lena’s face is a masterful study in unadulterated discomfiture. ‘No, they did,’ she waves her hands in shy, little circles at her sides, looking everywhere but at her now. ‘This—they set it up. So, we would, um, so I could see you. I mean, they knew, that it was me selling, I mean. And they already did, before I got your message earlier, about wanting to talk. They didn’t plan it after you sent it, it’s not—’ she coughs, clears her throat. ‘They knew,’ she finishes lamely. 

Kara nods slowly, and Lena nods back, looking every bit as lost as she herself feels. Another lengthy, empty silence grows between them, and a fresh bout of crippling dread crawls up her back. ‘Lena,’ she ventures, just as Lena breathes, imploringly, _‘Kara—’_

But, ‘Yes?’ Lena says desperately, looking perilously close to tears. She takes a step towards her, and Kara shifts back unconsciously.

‘I brought some Snapple,’ she blurts out, and the crestfallen look on Lena’s face gives way to a bemusement so profound her brows knit together. ‘Do you have cups?’

Lena stares at her for a beat too long, the confusion on her face contorting her features into a tight, pained frown. ‘In the kitchen,’ she says anyway, sagging against the wide, bow-window ledge. ‘Champagne flutes, I keep them on for open houses.’

Kara shoots a pair of finger guns stiffly in her direction, studiously ignoring the look of watery disbelief Lena gives her in reply. In the kitchen, she takes care to make as much noise as she can, pulling cabinet doors open with a dull bang, to mask the ludicrous breakdown slowly descending on her. 

She sets the flutes down on the counter and bites down into the fist she stuffs into her mouth, the corners of her molars sinking into the skin of her knuckles with a sharp sting. The initial shock of their reunion had begun to dissolve the longer she thought of Lena waiting, expectant and wary, in the drawing room of what, apparently, was one of her homes out here, all the way across the country.

She feels it settle inside her at last, with a soundless gasp—the blinding, crushing panic; her furious indignance. The intensity of its impact robs her briefly of breath. She feels her heart kick up a dull, arrhythmic throb, steady and aching. 

A reckoning was due, she hisses through clenched teeth; countless explanations, an accounting she could rightfully lay claim to, she knows. There was so much Lena had to answer for, an entire ocean of damage she had to fathom. 

The flooring creaks in the adjacent room—Lena shifting, moving away from the wall—and the very idea of her, in close proximity, ethereal, and beautiful, and painfully real, puts a lump in her throat. 

Here, at last, was Lena—no longer distant, no longer an ideal, no longer a figment of fiction. Here, at last, was Lena: crying quietly in the room next door. 

Here, at last, was Lena, and yet, despite the yawning maw of hurt churning inside her, she feels it in concert, to her quiet, resigned wonderment: a fluttering anticipation. An irreconcilable, otherworldly elation that brings tears to her eyes, her mouth curling into a reluctant, beatific smile at the corners. 

An entire year between them, and yet here, at last, was Lena. 

She quickly wipes at the tears tracking down her face and strolls back towards the piano, where Lena now sat, her shoulders slumped forward. She looks up just as Kara holds the flute out, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. Kara’s back stiffens with affected nonchalance. 

‘Thanks,’ Lena murmurs shyly, her gaze fixed to the floor. Still, Kara feels eyes on her retreating back, even as she takes a seat on the ledge Lena had vacated; she watches unflinchingly as Lena fidgets under her scrutiny, aware of the attention on her, of Kara drinking her in, the quiet stretching interminably long. 

Lena puts her full glass down on the piano-top, then, gentle as anything, and Kara straightens in response. ‘I didn’t marry him, Kara,’ she says quietly. She lifts her head, unable to look at her squarely, a tear slipping from the corner of her eye. ‘I would’ve thought somebody told you, or that you’d found out yourself somewhere—on the papers, in the news, on television. Anywhere.’

‘I found out too late,’ Kara says, a pang of regret shooting through her when Lena closes her eyes briefly at the admission. ‘If you had, I didn’t want to know any more than I already did. So, I didn’t look you up. And I didn’t want to ask. But, you didn’t. And I didn’t know.’

Lena glances away at that with a sniffle, runs a finger beneath her nose. ‘I looked for you everywhere,’ she says after a deep, shuddering breath. ‘But, nobody knew where you were. Nobody would tell me.’

Her voice breaks off into a choked off sob at the end, her features crumpling at the strain. It begins to dawn on Kara, then, in slow drip doses, the toll the past year must’ve taken on Lena—how she’d had to shoulder the brunt of her own losses, her fears, her abandonment alone; how helpless she must’ve felt in the aftermath, her own agency slowly but surely stripped away; how heartbroken and terrified she’d been to discover that, after everything, Kara herself had wholly disappeared without a trace. 

Kara swallows back her own tears at the sound, resists the urge to finally cross the space between them and embrace her. ‘It wasn’t their fault,’ she says hoarsely. ‘I didn’t tell anybody where I went, not even Eliza. Not even Alex—not for months. And I made Clark and Lois swear not to tell, ever. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine.’

It was, in essence, a final iron-clad precaution to ensure her own protection, a measure Clark had endorsed despite his own reluctance because he understood the time she’d need to heal. And yes, in hindsight, it had been a selfish, concerted effort to safeguard herself, she knew, but it had never been borne from spite. 

And, from the way Lena was nodding at the ground, despite herself, she believed it. It didn’t look, however, like Lena would ever find the words to move them along further, what with the tortured, pensive expression on her face. 

It hurt to think that she looked almost afraid of her; that all her charming confidence then had met its sorry match in Kara’s own reticence. 

‘Lena,’ she calls, and the look on her face must reflect the conflict she feels, because Lena promptly bursts into tears at the sight of it. 

‘I’m sorry, Kara,’ she sobs into her hands, hard enough her entire frame soon began to shake from the very force. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I ever hurt you, sorry I ever made you feel like you weren’t enough, sorry I didn’t love you the way you deserved.’ 

Kara’s already halfway out of her seat by the time she realizes it herself, reaching out towards her with both arms. Lena had given herself fully over to her grief: she sat, hunched over her own lap, breathless and gasping, her collected reserve obliterated by the sheer scale of her despair. 

‘I’m sorry for all of it,’ Lena weeps brokenly, and she can hardly help pausing mid-stride, right by the piano, when Lena looks up to pierce her with an anguished, entreating look before swiftly lowering her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, Kara,’ she hiccups. ‘I’m so sorry I ever let you go, so sorry I ever lost you. I can’t do it, can’t live with myself.’

She wraps Lena up in a tight embrace before she can second guess herself any further, tightening her hold when she hears a sharp intake of breath against her chest, Lena’s tears hitching, unabated. ‘Oh, Lena,’ she whispers, nearly full to bursting with pity. ‘Please don’t, it’s okay.’

And it isn’t, not yet, won’t ever be, maybe—she thinks briefly, sorrowfully—but it’s more than she can stand, seeing Lena so utterly destroyed. She feels Lena hesitate for all of a second, as if hardly daring to believe she could’ve been granted such a reprieve, and then, immediately, her fingers clutch desperately at Kara’s back, arms trembling from the strength of their grip.

 _‘Kara,’_ she breathes, crying harder at the tenderness of her touch, at the feel of Kara’s hands rubbing gentle circles against her back. ‘I’m so sorry, please, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I missed you, oh, god, I missed you everyday.’ She shudders helplessly in Kara’s arms, buries her face against her neck. ‘I never stopped looking for you. I never stopped.’ 

‘I know,’ Kara says softly, because she does, now, truly; understands at last in full. ‘I know.’

It takes all of an hour for Lena’s tears to dampen, her gasping, choked breaths giving way to muted little hiccups stifled vainly against Kara’s chest. ‘Lena, I’m not going very far,’ she hedges eventually, once her sniffles start to settle. ‘But, let’s get you some water, alright?’ She extricates herself with care, and Lena curls into herself almost unconsciously, not unlike a wilted flower, at the loss. 

Later, after she all but drains the glass Kara proffers in a single go, she sits back against the piano and tucks her ankles beneath the bench demurely. She knows Lena must be feeling leagues out of her depth from her flagrant display of vulnerability, forgives her for the mask that slides over her face after, cold as stone.

But, their hands still lie clasped together on her lap, their shoulders pressing into each other, and she counts it as a victory in its own way, still. Slowly, subtly, Lena lowers her chin in increments down towards her chest, a shallow, hesitant dip. ‘Kara,’ she says, so softly Kara leans in closer to hear. ‘Is there someone else for you now?’

That Lena even thinks she has cause to worry at all should be amusing in itself, but the nervous timidity in her voice sobers Kara up swiftly. ‘It’s only been a year, Lena,’ she admits, squeezing her hand in hers. ‘And it’d take a lifetime to get over you.’

It would’ve garnered her a shy little smile in response, in another time, another life, but that afternoon, all it draws out of Lena is an even sadder furrow between her brows. ‘Is it too late for us?’ she asks, pulling back from her, her gaze dropping further, lower, right down to her feet. 

Kara’s heart leaps to her throat with a tremendous jolt, then, because hadn’t she asked herself the same thing, nearly every day, of every week, of every month, for the past year? Hadn’t she cried herself to sleep every night, contemplating the exact same fear, wanting and dreading an answer with equal ferocity? Hadn’t she nearly driven herself mad sifting through every permutation, every simulation where Lena, by some miracle of God alone, actually came back?

‘I don’t know,’ she stammers, because she owes them both the truth, at last. Lena closes her eyes bracingly, lips pressed so tightly together another tear slides down the curve of her cheek. ‘I don’t know,’ she continues, gripping her hand firmer when Lena moves to slip away. ‘But, I want to find out—figure it all out—with you. You came back.’ She’s all too aware she’s crying now herself, but her voice is even, collected, by some grace or other. ‘You came back, you’re here, and I’m not letting you go again, not without trying.’

Lena’s face lights up briefly, a watery smile tugging at her lips; Kara takes a deep, fortifying breath. ‘Do you—’ she starts, and Lena looks up, peering into her face so intently, so hopefully, her heart breaks anew; she hears herself stutter, falter, ‘—want the other half of my sandwich?’ she trails off, resisting the incredible urge to slam her head down against the piano keys in frustration. 

But then, for the first time in well over a year, she sees it for herself, free of alteration and the taint of fading, waking dreams: Lena smiling, fondly, genuinely, thoroughly amused, even as she tries to restrain herself. ‘That’s—okay,’ she relents, biting her lip. ‘Yes. Okay.’

‘Okay,’ she parrots, stunned. ‘It’s tomato, it’s—I haven’t—’ she gestures flippantly behind her, towards the kitchen. Lena’s smile widens. ‘I’ll get it, you just,’ she flutters her fingers down at the piano. ‘Um, it still plays, d’you think?’

Lena glances at it in surprise. ‘I don’t know,’ she flips the cover gingerly to tap a quick, curious riff on the keys, transitioning into a higher octave. ‘I don’t know, I could try, I guess.’

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Kara says, pivoting on her heel with exaggerated slowness. She can’t help the smile slowly growing on her face while she pulls the rest of her sandwich free of its wrapping: she remembers the tune Lena’s tinkering with, a timeless King Cole-jazz piece, classic and achingly romantic. 

They had performed it together once, two Christmases ago at the Danvers’ old Midvale home. She lets the warmth of the memory take her back to that evening, lets it suffuse her with a wave of tender affection; she’s humming along still, under her breath, when she drifts back to the drawing room with the plate. 

The smile Lena gives her when she hears her singing softly—adoring, and sentimental, and wholly enamored—makes her heart flutter wildly in her chest. She lays a tentative hand on her shoulder, feels the way her muscles shift as Lena drives her fingers up the keys. 

_‘There are those,’_ Lena whispers along, tonelessly, _‘I am sure, who have told you they would give you the world for a toy.’_ It takes all of her willpower to simply not melt when Lena turns her head to touch her lips, feather-light, to her hand on her shoulder. _‘All I have are these arms to enfold you, and a love,’_ her throat bobs with feeling, bright green eyes suddenly wet, _‘time can never destroy.’_

She pauses, lifting Kara’s hand from her shoulder to hold it in both her own. ‘That really is all that’s left right now, Kara,’ she confesses quietly, ashamed. ‘There’s nothing left.’ A tear splashes onto the back of her hand, and then another. 

And, the thing is, Kara knows. 

It was public knowledge that Lex had taken over the bare-boned travesty L-Corp had devolved into. Lena had been all but forced to disappear from the media after she’d been outed as a whistleblower; she’d kept her affiliations with Obsidian North as a consultant, but even CNN had run a two-part special when Lena had been publicly asked to step down from the board of directors altogether. 

It makes her heart ache with deep, grating pity, knowing Lena’s insecurities, how she tied her own self-worth to her ability to provide for other people, had always been both a blight and a scourge.

‘Is that supposed to put me off?’ she challenges, attempting to coax a smile out of her and succeeding, to a degree. ‘It doesn’t matter, Lena,’ she says consolingly, wiping at the run-offs dripping down Lena’s chin. Her palm lingers against her cheek. ‘Won’t let anything happen to you. We’ll figure it out together.’

‘Kara,’ Lena draws a shallow, shaky breath, wiping at her eyes with the backs of both hands. ‘I don’t know if you’ll ever find it in you to forgive me, or if you still even want me,’ and Kara already wants to stop her in her tracks, pull her hand over hand from the pit of self-deprecation she was clearly entrenched in—because _how?_ How could she not see how much she loved her still, even after everything?—but Lena barrels on. ‘But, you—you deserve the world, the best of everything I can possibly give, my life included. You, and,’ here her voice drops, turns soft and self-effacing, ‘and if you want it still, with me, our own family. Someday.’ 

‘Lena,’ she stutters, unable to help herself any longer; her voice thickens with emotion. ‘Lena, I—’

‘I love you, Kara,’ she says, meeting her eyes directly for the first time that afternoon, and Kara feels her heart, she’s sure, now, quite literally stop. ‘I love you. And I wish it was enough, but it isn’t. But, if you’ll wait for me, it won’t be for long, I promise.’ 

A flicker of optimism brightens her pale face. ‘Jack took me on as a consultant for Spheerical Industries,’ she says assuringly, and Kara’s last wild thought is indignation on Lena’s behalf, infuriated at the thought that she still felt the need to defend herself, to pitch her _worth,_ to _Kara_ of all people—‘It’d be starting from scratch,’ she frowns slightly, but then nods, as if to convince Kara, too, ‘but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, the pay is decent, and I can save, and I know I’d do well, and then—’

And then, Kara kisses her—takes her lovely, perfect face in her hands, and kisses her, right on her lovely, perfect mouth: warm, and red, and delightfully parted in shock; kisses her until Lena all but melts against her, fingers scrabbling tightly against her back; kisses her until her own face grows wet with Lena’s tears, salt pooling at the corners of her lips, like the very first time. 

And, true to fashion, it’s Lena who pulls back first, eyes fluttering open as if startling from a dream, dazed, and entranced, and in utter disbelief. 

Kara touches their foreheads together, clasps their hands to bring them up to her mouth for a kiss. ‘You’re enough,’ she catches a tear with the back of a finger as it slides down Lena’s cheek, leans down to press her lips to it. ‘You’ve always been enough.’ 

She smiles a little into the kiss when Lena cants up to put her mouth against hers again, urgent and firm, as if she’d never get another chance to. 

‘Anyway, it’s not like I can talk,’ she shrugs after, coy and teasing. She wipes gently at the soft, pink streak at the corner of Lena’s mouth; thumbs beneath her eyes, her cheeks, wet with gratitude, relief. ‘At the end of the day, you’re still a Mensa-level genius seeking gainful employment at one of the world’s most prestigious tech conglomerates. Whereas I,’ she bobs her head slightly to bump their crowns gently together, revels in the amused little snort Lena lets out. ‘I’m only a small town, full-time librarian in love with a biomedical engineer so out of my league, she may as well be on another planet.’

Her breath rushes out of her in a huff when Lena burrows into her chest, embracing her so tightly her ribs ache with a muted crack of protest. ‘No, the dumb engineer lucked out, obviously,’ she laughs through a suspiciously wet sniffle. ‘She doesn’t know how good she has it. But, they have each other now, anyway—that makes them even.’

‘You’re right,’ Kara agrees, brushing her lips against her temple. ‘It finally does.’ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Ten, Epilogue: here, there, and everywhere
> 
> surprise, surprise! one more for the road, friends, because you lot deserve it. x
> 
> it’s been a ride, and i can’t thank you enough for sticking it through with me to the end! all my love, always! x
> 
> you can _still_ track updates, moodboards, queries, and more on tumblr on the [#hte au verse tag!](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/tagged/hte-au-verse)
> 
> please let me know what you thought! and then come say hello and drop me a line on [tumblr](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/), or on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/subtleanarchist) Have a great week ahead! x


	10. here, there, and everywhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In conclusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it’s been a while, friends! but, thank you so, so much for being so patient. 
> 
> [Nataly Dawn’s cover](https://open.spotify.com/album/0PkA8NjQw1YzfFQk712tZp?si=x_wvJq0FTpyPiidrk4w8_A) of one of the most romantic songs in existence is a favorite and is, truthfully, breathtakingly [perfect for context here.](https://genius.com/The-beatles-here-there-and-everywhere-lyrics)
> 
> this one, at the last, is twofold: first, for [Dea](https://twitter.com/deaferrero)—who is privy to practically every thought, and whose daily twitter banter is one of the best and brightest parts of my day: thank you for enabling every single headcanon, no matter how outrageous, and for screaming tirelessly at anything and everything with me—and, lastly: for you, reader. 
> 
> this is my last little gift to you all, for all the love you’ve given me. also: rating change. x

Lois knows. 

Or suspects to a degree, at the very least, she thinks frantically. Whatever it is, at any rate, flickers swift and twinkling and sure in her eyes as soon as she takes her in, her hand closing warmly around her wrist like a vise. Kara barrels past them both, right through the open front door, and straight into the foyer. 

‘And where,’ Kara cries, swiveling in place, fists planted squarely at her hips, ‘should I leave all these birthday presents for the birthday boy?’ 

There’s a mad scramble somewhere at the top of the stairs, and several heavy, bodily thumps, loud enough that Lena and Lois both flinch and cringe in turn behind her. But, then, a dark, curly mop of hair flops into view around the corner, the rest of its body encased in a long, lumpy green roll following closely behind it, moseying jerkily along its stomach across the carpet.

‘Oh, god, sorry, I forgot that he and Clark—’ Lois sighs beside her, and Lena pats at the hand wrapped tightly around her arm amusedly. 

_‘Aunties!’_ Jonathan Kent bawls breathlessly down at them, red-faced with exertion. ‘I want to come down, but I can’t.’

Kara frowns up at him. ‘Well, why not?’ she challenges, drawing up to the foot of the staircase in a gesture of impatience. ‘You don’t want to see what we’ve brought for your party tomorrow?’

He twists his head to look at them better, and shoots Lena a wide, gap-toothed grin when he sees the boxes in her arms. ‘Is it a new extension set?’ he says eagerly. 

‘Come see for yourself,’ Kara calls up, spreading her arms out towards him. ‘Come down, baby.’

He lets out a withering, drawn-out sigh and tries to squirm out of his lime-green trappings half-heartedly. ‘I really can’t,’ he says pleadingly. He throws her a patient, long-suffering look. ‘Dad’s made me a snake. And snakes don’t have legs. You’ll have to carry me down.’

‘They did, you know,’ Lena says, suppressing the urge to grin at Jon’s wide, round eyes. ‘Have legs, I mean. They found fossils a while back.’

Jon flails, and squirms, and grunts, until he manages to flop onto his back. ‘Did they really?’ he gasps at her. ‘When? What period?’

She meets Kara’s eyes, equally wide, and curious, and fond, and blushes prettily before clearing her throat. ‘Cretaceous, some say early, others say late,’ she nods down at the boxes stacked in her free arm. ‘But you can find out for yourself if you come down.’

Kara, thankfully, puts him out of his wild, thrashing misery; she bounds up the stairs in a leap and slings him over her shoulder like a sack. ‘Look, Lena,’ she calls down, turning around so he can wave at her from behind her back. ‘I’ve caught myself a copperhead.’

He thumps her solidly on the back with a small fist. ‘Copperheads aren’t green,’ he says petulantly. ‘Maybe a vine snake, or an emerald tree boa.’ As soon as Kara undoes the thick velcro strap around his waist and knees, he sprints over to Lena, nearly bowling her over when he wraps himself around her legs. ‘Hello, auntie,’ he sighs, pushing his face up against her pant leg. ‘I missed you.’

Behind him, Kara snorts in affront. ‘High treason,’ she declares loudly. ‘Two-faced duplicity. Utter sedition. Abject betrayal. Poisonous mutiny.’

Lena laughs, delighted, and kisses him soundly on his pale forehead. ‘I missed you, too, bug,’ she coos, brushing his curls back from his face with the back of her free hand. ‘Happy birthday.’

He glances back at Kara over his shoulder, color high on his cheeks. ‘Can I see my presents, auntie?’ he says meltingly. ‘Please?’

‘Just the one,’ Lois says sternly, touching the tip of his nose lightly with a fingertip. ‘Save the other one for the party tomorrow night.’

He lets Kara bundle him up in her arms, legs wrapped tightly around her waist. ‘You can hold these,’ she grunts, flapping a hand down at the gift-wrapped boxes Lena held. ‘Because I can’t spare another hand. You weigh a _ton,_ you whale. _’_

‘Thank you, auntie Lena,’ he says shyly, relieving her of his presents. He puts his cheek up to hers coyly for a kiss, face flushing with delight when she presses a close-lipped flurry all the way up his fringe. 

Lois gently punts her forward after, towards the kitchen. ‘I’m borrowing your wife,’ she sings out behind her, tugging Lena past the dining table. ‘I need help with dinner!’

In the living room, a tremendously, theatrically loud row erupts between its occupants amidst the furious crackling and tearing of wrapping paper. ‘Where are _my_ kisses?’ they hear Kara demand, followed by a heavy thump and high, muffled, ticklish giggles. ‘Where’s _my_ thank you? What’s Auntie Lena got that _I_ haven’t?’

‘A prettier face, so there!’ Jon cries back, just as loudly, even as Kara gasps, _‘Lies! Calumny!’_ with equally punitive indignation. 

It’s then that Lois releases her arm, rubbing soothingly at her wrist briefly before ducking down to check the oven with a chuckle. ‘He probably does love you more, you know. Don’t tell Kara,’ she laughs. ‘The second he found out you two were flying over last week, every second of every day’s been some variation of, “Auntie Lena this,” and, “Auntie Lena that.” Clark calls it a budding crush, bullies him mercilessly,’ she winks at Lena across the kitchen counter. ‘I call it good taste.’

Lena laughs, glancing back at the living room through the foyer where Kara and Jon lay sprawled out on their stomachs, examining a heap of jumbled pieces with identical expressions of perplexity. ‘He’s gotten so big,’ she hums fondly. ‘And so intelligent,’ she turns back to Lois, cocking a brow teasingly. ‘And we both know it’s not Clark he gets it from.’

Lois throws her head back, hooting loudly. ‘Kara,’ she yells, leaning over the counter to be heard. ‘Lena’s just said she’s grown tired of you. I have, too. We’ve decided to elope together.’ 

‘Please don’t,’ Kara calls back absently, clicking two neon-red sections of track together experimentally, Jon sitting cross-legged on her back. ‘I’d like to keep her around a little longer.’

‘I’m tired of her, too, auntie Lena,’ Jon says sweetly, peering up at her from across the room with fluttering, bashful eyes. Lena grins, utterly charmed. ‘Run away with _me_ instead.’

‘Oh, not you, too, you ungrateful rogue,’ Kara huffs, swatting him off her back with a flapping hand and a buck of her hips. He slides off onto the carpet with a giggly hiccup. ‘Make yourself useful and read me the instruction manual!’

Lena gamely pushes her sleeves up her forearms and beckons a hand out to Lois, who stands hunched over the mixer. ‘Give it here, please,’ she says, pulling the bowl of icing sugar towards her. ‘Where’s Clark?’ she asks, licking cream off the tip of a finger. ‘His car’s still outside.’

‘The Costco on Kellogg. We had to get a new grill. Bruce picked him up an hour ago,’ she laces her fingers beneath her chin, then, and regards her so openly and so appraisingly that Lena fights down another warm, self-conscious flush threatening to crawl up her throat. 

She must know, she thinks desperately, and moves to push the mixer away from between them, to come clean, but then Lois suddenly says, ‘It’s so great you both could fly over, I know how busy you two have been,’ and she resists the urge to sigh in relief at the reprieve. 

‘Wouldn’t have missed it for anything,’ she says sincerely. ‘I mean, Kara and I were just saying it’s not everyday a boy turns seven. Besides, Jack says I’ve got to start using up my vacation benefits, and Kara’s just finished that exposé for the _Times._ Figured we could both use a break, and I’d never been this far midwest,’ she shrugs, smiling delicately. 

‘I didn’t think it’d be a good idea at first, to be honest,’ Lois frowns, stirring the white, airy peaks in her bowl with a spoon. ‘After Martha died, Clark was in such a bad place for so long. He wanted to sell all this,’ she waves a hand out, gesturing at the expanse of sprawling straw-colored plain beyond the kitchen window. ‘Because no one was going to be able to take care of it anyway, with all of us out in the east. So, I was shocked out of my mind last year when he suggested we have Jon’s party out here, says he wants to fix the place up. Says he’s keeping it after all.’

‘You’re moving out here?’ Lena gapes, shocked. ‘The _heartland?’_

Lois shoots her a dubious look. ‘Maybe when we retire, Lena,’ she says wryly, breaking off blocks of baking chocolate. ‘And the kids are in college. But, god, not a second sooner.’ They scuffle over the pieces for a bit, play-fighting over the larger, lumpier castoffs. ‘Well, what about you two?’ Lois asks, and the twinkle in her eyes nearly makes Lena choke around a mouthful of chocolate. 

‘What about us?’ she manages casually, thumbing off smaller pieces from the block in her hand. 

‘Kara says you two might be moving next year, closer to Pine Bush. Showed us pictures, too,’ Lois nods meaningfully, and she almost pinches herself in reproach when she feels the tell-tale warmth of a blush steal across her cheeks. ‘Gorgeous Neo-colonial, pristine. Screened porch, office space. Four bedrooms.’

Lena titters dismissively, sliding to her feet to tip the rest of the pieces into the mixer. ‘You know how it is,’ she says, in what, she hopes, resembles a flippant sort of tone. ‘Always best to look to the future, right?’

She’s saved, just then, by the quick patter of feet scudding across the floor and a full-body tackle around her legs. ‘Auntie,’ Jon wheedles, looking up at her with limpid, glass-green eyes. ‘Auntie _Lena.’_

‘Yes, darling,’ she says gently, adoringly, scooping him up in her arms. 

Jon flings his small, wiry arms around her neck and jerks and flails and rocks in the general direction of the living room. ‘Come see what I’ve made you,’ he says excitedly. ‘Look at how tall we’ve made it.’

‘Go on,’ Lois says with a flick of her hand, grinning knowingly from ear to ear. Lena resists the urge to wheedle herself; to demand the full extent of what exactly she’d apparently managed to suss out on her own with nervous—albeit concrete—certainty. ‘I’m just about done in here anyway.’

It’s a miracle Jon can’t feel her heart thundering away in her chest with the way he’s wrapped himself around her, their cheeks pressed tightly together. ‘Look at what I’ve made you, auntie,’ Jon simpers, and Lena almost laughs at the way Kara pretends to roll her eyes from her spot on the carpet.

‘It’s just like you, Jonathan Kent,’ she snips up at him, arms crossed over her chest. ‘You and every overly-compensated, free-loading moocher this side of the globe, to take credit for all _my_ hard work.’

Lena presses a big, loud smack to his cheek. ‘Thank you, baby,’ she coos, jogging him in her arms. ‘It’s taller than even me, I think. Taller than even auntie Kara, probably.’ He giggles, wiping at the lipstick stains coming off his face with every pass of his hand. 

To their credit, the gargantuan labyrinthine marble run they’d built together truly was probably tall enough to brush the top of her shoulder at the very least. 

Seated on the floor by its corner, Kara tilts her chin up at her, putting her face up to be kissed in turn. ‘The union advocates for equitable remuneration,’ she says reasonably, tapping at her pink cheek. 

Lena shares a dark, conspiratorial glance with Jon from the corner of her eye and heaves a long, heavy groan. ‘Oh, well, if it’s the union, then,’ she sighs gratingly, leaning down towards her. 

Jon puts his hands out almost immediately, pushing bracingly between their faces before her lips touch Kara’s. ‘Oh, for—’ Kara grumbles, and Jon swiftly silences her with a great, wet peck of his own on her cheek. 

‘There,’ he says smugly, leaning back against Lena’s chest even as she laughs in his ear. ‘You’ve been compensated.’ He winds his arms back around Lena’s neck, and shoots a downright haughty look back at Kara. ‘Peasant,’ he adds, as an afterthought.

‘Look at the size of that _thing!’_ Clark cries, sweeping into the living room all of a sudden amidst Kara’s furious spluttering. He drops the bags in his arms to drop kisses on everyone’s heads. ‘Hello, Lena,’ he beams, throwing an arm around her shoulders. ‘Hello, peasant,’ he smirks, fluttering his fingers down at Kara.

‘You better watch what you eat tonight, Kent,’ Kara mutters without any real heat, even as Jon roars with laughter. ‘Glass doesn’t taste like anything when it’s mixed with things that do.’

Bruce pokes his salt-and-pepper head in past the foyer. ‘Where do you want the grill?’ he asks gruffly. 

Lena waves politely at him. ‘Hi, Bruce,’ she says, Kara echoing her warmly a beat later. He blinks at her in surprise before returning her greeting with an uncharacteristically shy wave of his own. 

‘Hello, Mrs Danvers,’ he smiles, brows flying right back up at the sight of Kara sitting cross-legged on the carpet beside her. ‘And Mrs Danvers,’ he chuckles. ‘Sorry I can’t stay long,’ he tells Lois, accepting a kiss to his cheek when she bustles over to greet him. ‘Jason’s flight comes in at four.’

‘It’s fine, thanks for helping out,’ Lois says, following him back out the door. ‘And you can leave the grill out back, we’ll set it up in a bit. Tell Selina and the kids we say hi!’

‘What’s Bruce Wayne doing all the way out here in Smallville?’ Kara muses, making grabby little hands out to Clark. ‘His Gotham-sized playground bore him to death already?’

Clark helps pull her to her feet with a quick, hard yank. ‘New research division, I think he said, out in Wichita. Damian and Jason are helping him set-up, Selina’s stayed on at Gotham.’

‘Is he coming to my party?’ Jon asks over Lena’s shoulder, and Lois snickers. 

‘I don’t know, bug,’ she shrugs smoothly, drawing an arm around Lena’s waist with a wide, wry grin. ‘Let’s ask auntie Lena for permission, she doesn’t really like him.’

Jon turns to look at her incredulously. ‘Why?’ He braces his hands against Lena’s shoulders, drawing back to look at her better. ‘Why not, auntie?’

Lois deftly avoids a well-placed kick to her shin, dancing away to stand closer to Clark. ‘She’s a little jealous,’ she whispers feelingly, and Jon’s eyes widen like saucers as he swivels back to share a look of disbelief with Kara, who was laughing into her hand. ‘Uncle Bruce had a bit of a crush on auntie Kara a while back.’

Lena glares at her venomously. ‘That’s not true,’ she protests hotly, resisting the urge to stamp her foot. ‘It’s not!’ 

‘Which bit?’ Clark asks innocently, shrinking back when she turns the full force of her glare on him. ‘The part where you were jealous, or the part where you don’t like him?’ 

‘All of it,’ she snaps, and even Jon giggles at the flush on her face. ‘I mean I’m _not_ jealous, obviously—’

‘Oh, obviously,’ Lois echoes, and Kara shakes her head quickly at her from behind Lena, nearly doubled up with silent hysterics. 

‘And I _like_ him,’ Lena growls insistently. ‘I mean, I do, I’m grateful—I don’t know how I would’ve made it out in one piece after the lawsuit without his lawyers, or his security detail after all the backlash when they threw James and my mother in prison.’

‘Okay, but who’s to say he really did it for you, and not for, you know,’ Lois fires a pair of finger guns off in Kara’s direction, and Clark finally lets out a guffaw. 

‘Stop,’ Kara says, entreating, waving them both off and wrapping her arms around Lena’s waist soothingly from behind. ‘Stop, you’ll give her a stroke. And then how will I ever get any?’

Lena’s eyes widen down at the back of Jon’s head, and she elbows Kara hard enough that she chokes on a snicker. Jon squirms in her arms, craning back to gesture at his parents with a wave. ‘Can I show it now?’ he pleads, turning back to look up at Lena from beneath his lashes. ‘Please, auntie. You can put the marbles in.’

On closer inspection, the marble run really does tower above her another good inch or so, and she finds herself appraising its translucent, bright neon-exterior with genuine admiration. She sets him down and peers up its length critically. ‘Where does it go?’ she asks him curiously. ‘After I put the marble in, where does it end up?’

‘At the bottom,’ he says, nonplussed. ‘At the pool in the bottom, where else would it go?’

‘I think the marbles are nanotech, and they line up like Morse code, Lena,’ Lois says earnestly. ‘Bruce has a matching set synched, and that’s how he communicates with Kara. They’ve been going at it through your godson’s puzzle runs behind your back for years.’

‘Stop, stop,’ Clark wheezes out, wiping at the corners of his eyes in mirth. ‘Oh, god, please, I can’t _breathe.’_

‘You know, funnily enough, Lois is about to say the exact same thing tonight,’ Lena mutters darkly, reaching down for a handful of marbles. Kara suddenly snorts, and Lena looks up to find her fighting off a decidedly naughty smirk. ‘I didn’t mean it dirtily,’ Lena hisses, horrified. 

‘Sorry, Danvers, no can do,’ Lois sighs, burrowing into Clark’s side. ‘My husband’s home tonight. I’ll let you know next time he’s out.’

‘Yeah, Danvers,’ Kara goads teasingly, squatting down to help Jon scramble over her shoulders. ‘Just drop the nano-ball already so Bruce doesn’t think I’m ignoring him.’

Lena rolls her eyes so hard they ache from the strain. ‘Oh, fuck off,’ she gripes good-naturedly under her breath, bumping her shoulder gently against hers before stepping closer to the base. 

The marbles flow like streams of quicksilver in every direction, spiraling down long, winding chutes and dropping, lift-like, through hoops and scoops and panels along the tracks. There’s a bit of breathless cheering on their end when the balls emerge around the blind corner along the slope in a line, zipping and ricocheting orderly down a sharp bit of track before being flung into a massive funnel, like sentient, well-behaved pinballs. 

‘Here it comes,’ Jon gasps excitedly, squeezing Kara’s head between his arms from his perch on her shoulders. ‘When they get past the see-saw, they’ll shoot down to the loops.’

It’s only when she finds herself jumping at the sound of the timer going off in the kitchen that Lena even realizes how quietly they’ve all been holding their breaths. ‘Here it comes,’ Jon whispers, high and reedy, pressing his face into Kara’s hair. ‘Here it _comes.’_

All of a sudden, the marbles run up against a dead-end with several loud, jarring clacks, one after the other. 

‘Huh,’ Kara straightens up with a frown, peering closely at the tracks, where they hadn’t been switched out with an open line. ‘That was a bit anticlimactic, wasn’t it?’ 

There’s an awkward beat of silence, and then—‘It’s all auntie Kara’s fault,’ Jon explains to Lena patiently. ‘Didn’t she say _she_ made it by herself?’

‘Do you think you can set that grill up now?’ Lois asks Clark conversationally, fighting to be heard over Kara’s loud, galled cries of: _‘You deceitful little troll,_ you _forgot to switch them out, didn’t you!’_

**. . .**

Later, after the last bites of cake disappear in Kara’s general direction, and Clark starts fussing over after-supper coffee for everyone with an elaborate-looking espresso machine, Lois seems to give up any lingering notion of pretense altogether and sequesters her on the living room sofa. 

Oh, _bother_ her, Lena thinks, nettled, at least she’s got an entire bowl of—

‘Not what I had in mind when you said dessert, but I’m definitely not complaining,’ Lois chuckles, passing her a third helping of lobster newberg before settling back down with a plate of her own. 

‘I can’t help it,’ Lena whines, scooping a spoonful onto a saltine. ‘They’re so _good.’_ She sets about fixing another two in succession, to Lois’ amusement, as soon as it disappears into her mouth. 

‘God, I know. Some days it feels like I could eat forever,’ Lois agrees, and Lena nods back almost tearfully, polishing off a fifth and sixth spoonful as if dinner had passed ages ago. All of a sudden, a mischievous twinkle dances in her eyes. ‘But, not Clark’s newburg, even if it _is_ to die for. I’ve always had a sweet tooth,’ she sets her empty plate down and props her chin on a hand with a smirk. ‘I can’t help myself whenever Clark makes his no-bake cheesecakes. I went through six slices a day, I think, when I was carrying Jon.’ She pretends to clutch at her lean stomach, faux-flippantly, and Lena freezes. 

Kara shuffles in from the kitchen quickly, cheeks flushed with excitement. ‘We’re setting up Jon’s giant medieval castle play set in here, if that’s okay, Lois?’ she asks, handing Lena a full glass of red. Lois scrambles to her feet abruptly, as if she’d suddenly remembered to do something she’d forgotten, and nods at Kara absently over her shoulder. 

‘It’s even got a moat,’ she says to Lena, topping off her own glass halfway with the merlot in her other hand. ‘And siege machines!’ 

‘Auntie Kara, come _on,’_ Jon says impatiently, already dragging a great plastic play chest onto the carpet with difficulty. 

‘I thought we were having a brew?’ Lois says, sounding just the tiniest bit winded. She swaps Lena’s glass out for a cup of coffee, dashing back to the kitchen to hand it off to Clark at the sink, before pattering back with another cup for herself and a plate of digestives. 

‘Oh, yes, thank you,’ Lena sighs, relieved, and seizes the plate of digestives almost gratefully. 

Jon dashes over to them in a puffing hurry after a while, clutching several complicated parts and a thick rubber strip. ‘Auntie, can _you_ string a catapult?’ he moans dejectedly. ‘Auntie Kara’s only going to break it with all her manhandling. And you’re a real engineer.’

‘I can still hear you, you mean little bridge-troll,’ Kara snipes absently, thoroughly preoccupied with laying out her palm-sized infantry along the battlements. 

Lena wipes her mouth delicately with a napkin and holds a hand out. ‘I’ll trade you if you hold onto my plate for a second,’ she winks, and Jon hurriedly switches them out, his round cheeks a warm, brick-red. 

‘Can I have one?’ he asks, pointing down at her lobster newburg, which she’d heaped across a spread of digestives. He nibbles curiously on a corner when she nods and makes a face almost immediately. _‘Auntie,’_ he splutters, swallowing with difficulty. ‘They don’t _taste_ good!’ he chokes in disgust. 

‘They do to auntie Lena,’ Lois says knowingly, and Lena glares at her over the length of rubber piping in her hands. ‘Maybe it’s got that sweet-salty combo I used to crave with your dad’s cheesecake.’

‘There you go, bug,’ Lena says quickly, all but shoving the catapult back in his hands. ‘And I’ll have these back, thanks.’

‘Thank you,’ he says devoutly, leaning up to press a kiss to her cheek before diving back onto the carpet beside Kara. 

Lois reaches over her lap to snag a biscuit. ‘He’s a little heathen!’ she groans around a mouthful. ‘These taste amazing!’ They both flinch in surprise when Kara lets out a piercing yelp, Jon’s plastic golf balls arcing through the air to clear her defense lines in wide swathes. ‘It’s so good to spend some quality time with you both again, we’ve all been so busy,’ she sighs, looping an arm fondly through Lena’s. ‘And Jon’s missed you both so much.’

‘I know,’ Lena agrees, a little sadly. ‘We miss all of you, too. Hopefully now that Kara doesn’t have to fly out for correspondence anymore we can drive up more often,’ she smiles at the pair gamboling roughly on the carpet in a tumble of high-pitched shrieks and giggles, Jon dangling off Kara’s neck like a particularly tenacious lodestone. ‘Especially before Jon starts at Burke next year.’

Lois lets out a heavy groan at that. ‘Oh, my _god,_ don’t remind me,’ she mumbles into her palm. ‘Clark says I’m being too smothering, but it’s a huge adjustment coming off homeschool. Some days I wish I could keep him this small forever.’ 

She sighs, long and deep, and turns to face her squarely, pulling their tangled hands onto her lap with a squeeze. ‘But, that’s how it is with kids,’ she concedes, thumbing gently at the spaces between Lena’s knuckles. ‘You let them go to let them grow, and they’re only little for a little while, but the love stays the same. But,’ she ducks her head to catch her eye, smiling softly. ‘You’re about to figure that out for yourself pretty soon, aren’t you?’

All the air rushes out of Lena’s lungs in a soundless gasp. 

She feels it, a quick flash of panic climbing, white-hot and searing, up her throat, before settling thickly, seethingly in her stomach. And Lois must read it on her face because she puts her plate down quickly and takes both her hands in her own. 

But, then, just as swiftly, a great upsurge of relief rises—so completely, and so profoundly it makes her eyes water—to take its place, and she squeezes Lois’ hands back tightly. ‘Yeah,’ she hears herself finally whisper, for the first time in weeks since she’d first found out, and the thought makes her voice break at the end. ‘Yes,’ she croaks, and then she’s laugh-crying quietly, in mingled fear and delight, into her hands, Lois laugh-crying in concert right beside her. 

‘How far along are you?’ Lois says excitedly, helping Lena wipe ineffectually at her face with hands clumsy from giggling. 

‘Eight weeks,’ Lena admits, clutching onto her arms like a lifeline. ‘Does Clark know?’

Lois lets out a derisive little snort, and Lena laughs, loud and light and free, like she hadn’t let herself for far too long a time. ‘You could be giving birth tomorrow and he wouldn’t say a thing, won’t even comment on the weight you’ve put on. Martha’s put the fear of god in him with women.’ 

A terrific crash makes them both start, Jon’s turrets and ramparts blasted apart in bits and blocks every which way when Kara crashes into it on all fours entirely by accident, Jon sitting astride her back like a cavalryman. ‘Woopsie, sorry, sorry,’ Kara calls out over her shoulder sheepishly, half-shuffling, half-cantering away towards the stairs, just as Jon cries out, rather indignantly, _‘Horses don’t_ talk!’ 

Lois waits before Kara’s heavy, four-limbed patter disappears upstairs before leaning in closer, chin propped on a hand. ‘Eight weeks—sweetheart, you’re _glowing,’_ she grins. Her voice suddenly lowers, turns graver: ‘Have you told Kara?’

She runs a gentle, tentative hand across her own stomach, feels a sharp burst of pride and elation when Lois reaches out to brush the soft, barely-there swell of it reverently. ‘I haven’t,’ she confesses in a whisper. ‘I wanted to be sure, so sure, at least until my period, to see if it’d—if I’d take this time. I didn’t—I didn’t want to disappoint her, after the last time we tried, if it—if I didn’t—’

Lois cups her cheeks, thumbing beneath her eyes tenderly, and she blinks, startled, at her own tears. ‘Lena, you could never disappoint her,’ she murmurs assuringly, and Lena lets herself sob in sheer relief, nodding and throwing her arms around Lois’ shoulders in a tight embrace. ‘Oh, she’ll be so thrilled,’ Lois whispers into her hair, rocking her gently in place. ‘You’re both going to be _great_ parents, Lena, I don’t doubt it for a second. Ain’t no luckier kid in the world,’ she pauses. ‘Except maybe mine, obviously.’

Lena gives a watery laugh at that, pulling back to mop at her face with her sleeves. ‘Well, that’s—that’s also—that’s the thing,’ she mumbles, her cheeks pinking prettily at the thought. Lois stares at her, utterly bemused. 

‘What is?’ she says warily, eyes widening. 

In the kitchen, Clark accidentally smashes a ceramic serving platter against the sink in shock, nearly slip-sliding across the floor in a streaming puddle of suds, when Lois screams, _‘Two?’_

**. . .**

Later, she stands under the shower for what, she thinks, is almost an hour.

Kara—Kara must suspect, now, too. She’d come down from Jon’s room for another helping of pound cake while Lois was off tidying up the living room, chattering over her shoulder to Lena at the kitchen counter while she’d poured herself half a quart of tea in a great china soup mug. 

But, then, she’d turned around, quicker than Lena could turn her head away, and she’d seen the state of her in full: her face, flushed scarlet; her eyes swollen and red-rimmed from her cathartic admission to Lois. ‘Lena,’ she’d whispered, coming over to cradle her face gently, carefully in her hands. ‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’

She’d buried her face in Kara’s chest then, overcome with feeling, fingers tight against her back. _Nothing,_ she’d wanted to laugh, tearfully, ecstatically, _nothing is wrong, everything is perfect, and wonderful, and beautiful._ They’re _beautiful._ And she’d felt it, too—the words springing to the tip of her tongue at long last; the longing in her chest stirred to a fever-pitch in intensity—to close the distance between their mouths and soothe the furrow between Kara’s brows with the loveliest thing she’d ever felt compelled to confess to. 

And she would have, likely, had Lois not come in to find them tangled together so compromisingly. ‘Stop accosting her, Kara,’ she’d heard her chide with a snort, and Kara’s thumb had stilled from where it had been rubbing soothingly beneath her ear. 

‘I’m not,’ Kara protested, pulling Lena closer to her chest. ‘I leave her alone with you for an hour and find her like this, what’ve _you_ been doing to her?’

Lena had pulled herself free with no small amount of difficulty, taking a last, lingering drag of Kara’s scent from the collar of her sweater before pulling her down by the shoulders for a quick, chaste kiss. ‘I’ve just been thinking about Christmas this year,’ she’d said thickly, after, and it wasn’t entirely untruthful. ‘About how Lex and Mercy’s son, Lucius, would’ve been five next month. That he liked train sets, and how I would’ve sent him one this year without a note, so he doesn’t have to know who it’s from.’

Something like pity settled across Kara’s features then, soft, and sad, and infinitely pained for her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she’d murmured, and her thumb had resumed its gentle, soothing sweep along her nape. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right. I miss him, too. It’s been a year, I can’t believe I almost forgot.’ 

She’d allowed herself a moment to reflect, briefly, on the cruelly tragic farce the past year had been; how, barely a week after Lex had sent them tickets to a luxury cruise for her and Kara’s sixth wedding anniversary, Lillian had been indicted on another five counts of securities fraud; how she’d made to send a lawyer to him for help from James’ own retainer out of sheer desperation the very same evening; how the attorney had relapsed into something of a lush after losing to the federal court, in a blow that had cost James another four counts of conspiracy and securities fraud in addition to another three years on his nine-year prison sentence; how, on the way home from Lucius’ pre-school musical, Mercy’s Range Rover had been bent beyond hope of recognition after the lawyer had crashed into them; how his blood alcohol content post-mortem had been a staggering 0.28; how, in her devastation, Mercy had tried, and failed, to follow her four year-old son a week after his funeral. 

They had nearly lost Lex to his grief in the months following the car accident, and it’d been nothing short of a miracle that they’d even managed to convince him and Mercy to move east, closer to them, and get help at all; where Dr Quinzel, to their infinite, serendipitous surprise, had been more than willing to oblige. 

She had thought of how Lex’s loss, his pain, had already been so near to her, despite the fact that Lucius hadn’t even been hers. The very idea of being intimate with the notion herself, now, in a wholly, frighteningly novel way with Kara had sent a brief shiver racing down her spine. 

Kara had caught the tremble of it beneath her palm at her shoulder, her gaze turning sharp and insistent with concern, but kind and inquiring with every pass of her fingers against her scalp, her neck. ‘Are you okay?’ Kara had murmured worriedly.

But she’d caught Kara’s hand along the back of her shoulder and brought her fingers up to her lips to kiss them, tenderly, reverently. ‘Yes,’ she’d sighed, because she was. They were. ‘I love you,’ she’d added, barely above a whisper, turning her cheek to nudge at her palm. 

Kara had taken her face in both her hands, her gaze roving over her features intently. ‘I love you, too, Lena,’ she’d said, soft and sincere and only the least bit sad. She’d silenced another slew of worried queries with her own mouth and the slow, languid sweep of her tongue, and Kara had leaned into her in a way that might’ve quickly turned a bit more interesting had it lasted a little longer. 

But then Jon had come galloping noisily down to fetch her impatiently, only to find them _“kissing again!”;_ had assumed an extremely injured air before promptly declaring them both gross at the top of his lungs, and that had been that. 

Kara had offered to put him to bed after being cajoled into another long noisy romp—that only ended when Jon had nearly broken his own window with a softball—but that had been an hour ago. And here, now, waiting for the sound of her footfalls in the hall out, she feels herself stricken by some vaguely anticipatory thrill, tempered by a pressing, crushing anxiety that makes her sag against the tiled wall, makes her dig her soapy fingertips into the flesh of her arm, her scalp, for a reprieve.

Kara, she decides firmly, would know before the night was over, and their lives would forever find themselves upended on their heads in the most wonderful of ways. 

It’s only after she finishes brushing her teeth, gazing distractedly down into the sink, that Kara finally tiptoes into the bathroom sheepishly. 

‘Hi,’ Lena whispers at her shapeless fog-form in the steaming mirror, smiling around her toothbrush. ‘I was beginning to think you’d fallen asleep up there.’

Kara groans softly, sliding her arms around her waist from behind as she rinses her mouth out. ‘It took him ages to nod off,’ she chuckles. Her hand finds purchase in the folds of Lena’s soft black robe, thumbing gently at the skin of her hip. ‘Did you miss me?’ she teases, mouthing at the curl of her ear. 

Lena tilts her head back against her shoulder, noses at her cheek damply with a sleepy little hum. ‘How ‘bout you put me to bed, too?’ she stifles a yawn against Kara’s neck, smiles against her skin when she feels the rumble of her soft laughter in response. 

‘You can’t fall asleep on me,’ Kara protests, nipping lightly at the line of her jaw. A thin tendril of want slides down her stomach, hot and fleeting, at the feel of Kara’s tongue against her skin. ‘I haven’t had you to myself the whole day!’

‘Now, who’s fault is that?’ she laughs, tangling their fingers together against her stomach. ‘Obviously not Jon, because I’d pick him over you any day.’

That draws a genuine smile out of Kara, wide, and fond, and light. ‘You think we can keep him?’ she buries a grin against Lena’s shoulder, pressing her lips to the soft black velour of her robe. ‘I haven’t had a romp like that in ages. Maybe we should get a medieval playset, too. I can keep it in the den! What’s wrong?’ 

Lena turns to her suddenly, heart thumping wildly in her chest. _What if I told you,_ she wants to say, desperately, elatedly, _that_ we _could give him friends? What if I told you we ought to be thinking about mobile sets first, for their nursery?_ But then the moment passes just as quickly, and her nerve ebbs, dwindles; she throws her arms around Kara’s neck to mask the movement, embracing her so tightly she feels her heartbeat slow to keep pace with Kara’s solid, steady pulse. 

‘You’re so good with him,’ she says softly instead, nosing up into her throat. She feels tears spring to her eyes, a light, radiant ebullience bubbling to the surface at the very idea of Kara, _her Kara,_ gamboling magnificently across their own carpet with two little rough-and-tumbles, color high on their soft, round, apple-cheeks, the sound of their laughter high and ringing. ‘I’m glad we came out here to see them,’ she says, a little hoarsely. She clears her throat, blinks hard once, twice. ‘I’ve missed them lots.’

‘Me, too,’ Kara beams into her hair, crushing her closer in a bruisingly tight hold and swinging her briefly off her feet before loping towards the shower. She watches fondly as Kara hops on a leg to pull her pants off with a flourish, her socks tumbling out from behind the curtain in succession. ‘I’m so happy we got time off to come see them. And Alex and Kelly tomorrow morning, too, even if the kids couldn’t come.’

‘What time’s their flight coming in?’ she asks rather absently, toeing at their clothes lying in a heap on the tiling. 

‘I don’t know, I’ll have to check again. Quarter past ten I think they said, last time I did,’ Kara pokes her head past the curtain, smiling suggestively. ‘You sure I can’t convince you to help rinse me off?’

‘Not with your cousin directly above us, I don’t think,’ she wrinkles her nose at the very idea; Kara pouts up at her, looking incredibly put-out. 

‘I can keep quiet,’ she insists, and Lena bites her lip to stifle a laugh at the expression on her face, pleading and eager all at once. ‘We can turn the water up, it’ll muffle everything!’

‘And risk losing all the heat? In November? Not on your life, darling,’ her hand darts out to tweak her nose gently. ‘Don’t forget to wash your hair.’

‘I won’t, I won’t,’ Kara grumbles.

**. . .**

She sits, brushing her hair out in the vanity, until Kara’s figure comes to hover over her shoulder almost shyly behind her, her own curls still warm and damp from her shower.

‘Where on earth are you going?’ she asks, smiling at her through the mirror, her gaze drifting down to her slim blue-grey denim joggers, belted at the waist, her knitted pink pullover. ‘I thought you wanted to cuddle tonight—or d’you want to go for a drive before bed?’ she holds her hand out over her shoulder, beckons her closer with a curl of a finger. ‘Come here, baby.’

Kara pulls her up from the seat and into her arms almost immediately, engulfing her in a warm, tight embrace that has her sighing from sheer contentment. ‘I do want to cuddle,’ she mumbles into her shoulder, and Lena smiles against her cheek, nudging up until their lips touch softly together. ‘But,’ her tongue flicks out to brush against hers briefly, and she feels her want rise, swift and sure, to meet it. ‘I also brought something for you, if you want to.’

‘Oh?’ Lena murmurs, already a little breathless. She cants up for a proper kiss that Kara returns with enthusiasm, pressing into her until her back collides with the bureau, the drawers rattling behind her reproachfully. ‘You’re being naughty,’ she hears herself pant.

‘I’ve been thinking about you all day,’ Kara says truthfully; her hand slips through the parting of her robe, sliding warm and insistent up the length of her thigh before hitching it up her onto her own waist. ‘I was wondering when you’d start to catch on,’ she teases. 

‘I think I had a pretty good idea when you tried to start a round of footsie during dinner,’ she says, musingly. ‘I think Lois noticed.’

That gives Kara pause, and she draws back with a small, tight frown. ‘Oh, ew,’ she shudders, disgruntled. ‘Serves her right, I guess, for all those years I’ve had to endure watching them all up in each other’s faces.’ Her finger begins to wind and stroke suggestively around the downy hairs further down Lena’s neck, in a way that, predictably, deliciously, makes her squirm.

‘Kara, we can’t,’ she starts, feebly, and hears the falter of her own voice in its relenting; knows Kara hears it, too, in the way she breathes out a snicker, soft as anything, against her cheek. ‘They’re right above us, you _oaf,’_ she hisses playfully, red-faced and twisting, even as she stifles a laugh of her own against Kara’s shoulder. ‘What if they hear? What if Jonathan comes down?’ 

But even her voice begins to drop a little lower, a little coarser with every slow, sensual pass of her fingertips against her scalp; Kara suddenly leans down, swallowing the rest of her idle questions up in a searing kiss that she returns with equal heat. 

‘We can be quiet. And he won’t. They won’t,’ Kara whispers, smiling mischievously, even as she slides the robe off Lena’s shoulders, her arms, until it pools around her waist, held loosely by the ties. ‘Better tonight than tomorrow, with Alex and Kelly across from us, right down the hall. And I want to give you your present before midnight.’

The reminder draws a grin out of her, and she presses it to the curl of Kara’s mouth with an adoring little sigh. ‘We’ve already exchanged gifts this morning, sweetheart, you don’t have to,’ she murmurs, holding her arm up. They both glance down in concert at the piece gleaming exquisitely on her wrist; one to match, perfectly, the one she’d gotten Kara the same morning for their anniversary, entirely by accident. 

Kara puts her lips to it delicately, mouths at the skin of her wrist beneath it. ‘You haven’t taken it off,’ she says, delighted, and holds up her own. The light catches the cut of it, glinting, golden and beautiful, on her arm. ‘But that’s not what I meant.’

‘Oh, I’m well aware,’ Lena pretends to groan, conceding. Her disgruntled noises peter off into high, drawn out moans with every curious curl of Kara’s hand between her legs. 

Kara chuckles wetly into her mouth at the find. ‘So it wasn’t just me,’ she breathes, amused, and Lena feels herself thrust up helplessly into her, whimpering. She feels like she could come from this, maybe: from the lewd, languid grind of Kara’s denim against her growing slick, already aching with need; hard enough that she feels the sensual chafe of her zipper knock and nudge up into her, a leg wrapped around the hard line of her waist. 

She feels the downright sinful contrast in the way the wet slide of her cants up to brush the buckle on Kara’s belt, but only just barely, which—‘Okay, okay, you win, I’m sorry I lied, I’ve been unbearably horny the entire night, too,’ she whines, fumbling for the belt buckle with fingers made clumsy with want. ‘But don’t make me wait like this, Kara, please, god, you know I can’t.’ 

The harsh rasp of her zipper cutting through their labored breaths must startle something Pavlovian in Kara, then, because she snaps her hips up into hers suddenly, moaning into her mouth. 

‘I can take the edge off a bit,’ Kara whispers. ‘But I want you on the bed.’ She makes quick work of Lena’s robe, shucking it carelessly onto the floor; grips handfuls of her pale, round bottom, and thrusts up into her in a rolling, almost frantic grind that draws a cry to Lena’s lips at the sheer pace. 

She puts her mouth up to Kara’s ear, pants and whimpers at the way Kara shifts, raising an arm to lean a hand up against the wall for leverage. Something thick and blunt nudges at her entrance with every deep roll of Kara’s hips, catching at the rim of it so insistently she thinks she could come from the feeling alone. 

‘What is that,’ she hears herself mumble, winded, reaching between them to tug down at Kara’s jeans; to put a hand through the seam between the teeth of it, further in. ‘Are you wearing it?’ she says in disbelief, drawing back to look at her with wide eyes, blown with want. ‘You’ve been wearing it this whole time?’ 

She squeezes around the heft of it, feeling down and around its length, its girth, and must sigh, she thinks, or makes a noise loud enough to startle, because Kara covers her mouth with her own to stifle it. ‘I can’t tell when the mood hits you these days,’ Kara admits with a laugh. ‘You jump me anywhere, any time.’

‘I don’t hear _you_ complaining,’ she grumbles, but she lets herself be led onto the bed, scrambling back against the sheets. 

‘Why should I?’ Kara says, undoing the clasp at the tie holding up her bun on top of her head; her hair comes tumbling down in soft, thick waves around her shoulders. ‘When I want you just as much, every second of the day?’

‘Yeah?’ she breathes, and shifts to slide her hands under her hips to temper her own excitement when Kara’s pale pink jumper comes up and over her head. She makes a slow, teasing show of undoing her own belt, and Lena feels herself bear down in sheer need at the sight, her mouth growing dry. 

And then, all too soon, Kara’s denim slides down her legs, and Lena has a fleeting, out-of-body glimpse of herself lying back limply, stricken with shock, mouth working open soundlessly. ‘What do you think?’ Kara says, more than a little smugly, but the color on her cheeks is as crimson as the lace set she’s in, and her sudden temerity snaps Lena out of her own stupor. 

‘Baby,’ she ventures, and Kara’s smirk stiffens a little harder at the rasp in her voice; at the sight of her, wet and pink, between her legs when she finally spreads them. ‘You’re beautiful. So _beautiful.’_ And she is, she thinks, rather shaken with need—she really, truly is. She feels her thoughts come up short, grinding to a halt the longer she lets herself look. 

It’s a set she prays no one else on earth has ever seen Kara in, not even the sales assistant she thinks must’ve helped her pick it out—a deep crimson chantilly: sheer, and gartered at the waist and thigh without the least bit of pretense in modesty. 

Her breath stutters into sweet, stilted gasps, and Kara must hear it and take pity because she leans forward to lay a warm hand against Lena’s bare thigh; which, she thinks fleetingly, does absolutely nothing to settle her, because the harness about Kara’s hips, and the silicone between her legs, shifts enticingly even as she does. 

‘Kara, baby, please,’ she whimpers helplessly, shifting clumsily to her side, and then to her hands and knees, to crawl over towards her. _‘Kara.’_

Their lips meet sweetly, at first, and softly, but then the want swells up in her, drives down through her core like a bolt, low, and white-hot, and insistent when Kara presses her back with her delicate weight; her lace chafing sensually against her bare skin as she sinks against her; tongue curling warm, and slick, and insinuating along her own. 

‘Oh, look at you, sweetheart,’ Kara coos, barely above a whisper, and Lena watches the shifting shine of her lip, wet from her own mouth, in a heady daze. ‘You’re so beautiful, like this. What do you need, baby? Tell me what you want.’ She parts Lena’s legs almost gently, slides a finger between her folds, as if to test; circles her lightly where she aches, small and stiff, with a fingertip, until she keens, and gasps, and moans. ‘Use your words, sweetheart,’ Kara murmurs, flicking her tongue along her ear. ‘Tell me, I’ll do anything.’

‘Baby,’ she gasps, and Kara’s hand stutters against her at the sound of her voice, thin and hoarse with desire. ‘Baby,’ she says again, reaching down to palm the stays around Kara’s thigh, first, and then higher, to grasp and stroke at her length. ‘Can I—’ and here she falters, until Kara’s finger dips down to tease her at the rim, nerving her. ‘Can I suck you, please?’ It comes out a whimper, broken with abandon. 

She watches Kara’s throat bob once, hard, before moving off her to shift to her side; the silicone bumps against her shoulder, and then her chin, until Kara’s on her knees by her head, sitting back onto her heels. She reaches for Lena’s hands, her arms, to tug her closer. ‘Yeah, okay,’ she whispers, threads her fingers through Lena’s hair, pulls her head closer, gently, further down onto her lap. ‘You want to be my good girl, and suck on me a little? You want that?’

She makes a noise in her throat, a muted, broken little sound that makes the color rise, high and bright, on Kara’s cheeks. But, she nods, or manages to, and then Kara’s slipping herself into her mouth, feeding her the length of it smoothly, and her breath is cut off abruptly with a gasp. 

It’s a new piece, and a stretch, and her jaw tenses in surprise at the girth, the length; Kara is intent, working her throat open with a sigh, until Lena presses up against her hip with a sniff and a trembling hand, eyes streaming. ‘Sorry, baby,’ Kara says soothingly, pushing Lena’s hair back gently from her face and stroking at her chin. ‘You okay?’

She makes a small noise of assent before moving her head, swallowing around her and glancing up, gaze heated and watery in turn. ‘Fuck, you’re so pretty,’ Kara curses under her breath, closing a hand gently, admiringly, at the soft, retreating swell of her throat. ‘So pretty sucking me, Lena; so pretty with my cock in your mouth, thick in your throat. You like how hard I am for you, don’t you?’

Lena moans frightfully loud at that, wanton with animal lust, and Kara pauses, wide-eyed, shushes her frantically—and then they’re both laughing hysterically, Lena drawing back until the silicone slides out in full, stifling each other’s giggles with their hands and failing. 

‘Fuck off, oh, fuck _off,’_ Lena gasps hoarsely, tears streaming down her face; she pushes weakly at Kara’s head and flops onto her back. ‘I told you this was a bad idea,’ she groans before seizing up with a fresh round, turning her head to guffaw into a pillow. 

Kara doubles up beside her, brick-red with suppressed howls, thumping at her shoulder. ‘God, I hope all that Bordeaux knocked Clark out,’ she sniggers, rolling to dodge another light-hearted cuff to her back. ‘If that didn’t wake the dead all the way to Gotham, I’ll eat my pants.’

‘Keep it up and that’ll be the only thing you _do_ eat tonight. At least Wayne’ll finally find out your dick’s bigger than his,’ Lena gripes, and Kara swats at her. ‘That’s what you get for being a tease!’

Kara’s mouth drops open in mock-outrage. ‘How am _I_ the tease?’ she demands, wrangling her by the wrists, even as Lena starts squirming away, giggling anew at the look on her face. She catches Lena around the waist, wrestles her in place between her knees, until she’s panting breathlessly above her. ‘You wanted to suck me off,’ she says patiently, and Lena shivers a little, gaze dipping down to her lips. ‘You wanted my cock in your mouth.’

Lena squirms beneath her, pinned by the wrists, and chafes their hips and legs together almost imploringly. ‘Okay,’ she relents; her leg comes up to rub against Kara’s waist before sliding down to toe at her calf in a slow, mesmerizing circuit. ‘You’re right, it was wrong of me to get you so hard for nothing.’ She watches the flush grow on Kara’s face more than a little smugly when she presses up into her with a knee, nudging at the base of her harness with steady pressure. ‘What’re you going to do about it?’ she breathes. 

Kara’s eyes flash dangerously. ‘Keep you quiet, for one,’ she says with heat, lifting a hand to smother her firmly around the mouth, while she closes her other over Lena’s breast. 

‘Oh, fuck,’ Lena hisses, muffled against her palm; Kara presses her down into the sheets with her hips, checks her petulant writhing with a twist of her nipple. If she thought she was sensitive before, breasts growing swollen and heavy, it was nothing, absolutely nothing, to the relentless assault Kara was foisting on her now. 

Her mouth was already so warm—every soft, hot swipe of her tongue flicking against her nearly sends her over the edge in minutes. ‘Kara,’ she manages thickly after the ache between her legs builds beyond reasonable forbearance, tugging her off for a breath. ‘Baby—please, I don’t want to come yet.’ 

She almost lets herself cry a little in relief when Kara finally gives one last, longing suck on her nipple before sliding down her body to urge her leg over her shoulder. She sets about licking down, inside her, the warm wet of her tongue almost overwhelming in its teasing up-curls; the tip of her nose drifting across her, already impossibly stiff and tight with need. Her hand clenches fitfully around Kara’s hair, close about the roots, the scalp, hips squirming up into her open mouth. 

She pulls Kara’s hand off her face to press it back down against her breast, closes her fingers over hers, hard. ‘Kara, please,’ she says, and this time Kara looks up, a little dazed and dreamy, chin slick, to catch the shine of a tear trailing down her cheek. ‘I can’t—please, I’m so close.’

Kara lowers her head to press her lips back to her softly gaping-wet with a groan, and she feels the rumble of it against her, inside her. ‘So come for me. Come for me, please,’ she whispers, and Lena makes a desperate sort of whine at that, tossing her head back against the sheets with a vigorous shake of her head. 

‘Not like this, don’t want,’ she murmurs plaintively, a lovely, rosy flush crawling down her throat, her chest. She tugs on Kara’s shoulders, her arms, heels dragging up her lean, tense back until Kara hovers over her to kiss her. ‘Want you inside me,’ she says, cradling her face in her hands. ‘Want you to come inside me.’ 

‘Okay,’ Kara pants without fight, shifting between her legs to spread her wider. Its blunt head slips, and catches, and misses against her tight rim, Kara’s hands suddenly clumsy and trembling; she moans fretfully into her mouth, breath damp and hot, with every shallow little dip. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ Kara mumbles remorsefully, pecking her briefly on the chin before reaching between them to slip herself in. 

It’s—it might be a _bit_ too much, she realizes belatedly with a gasp, as soon as its girth gently breaches her open. She cries aloud when Kara finally sinks in, sliding slowly, steadily inside her; the stretch is novel, the thick, hard length of it burning, and full, and nearly far, too much—but only just.

She gasps, and groans, and pants, squirming at the intrusion—the deep, deliciously aching, burning fullness of it inside her, working her open. ‘God,’ she mewls. _‘Oh, god._ Fuck, _fuck.’_ Above her, Kara moans, low and broken, bottoming out after a beat, gaze fixed heatedly at the obscene, red gape of her between her thighs. Lena knocks her forehead against the arm Kara braces by her head, keening lowly. ‘Shit,’ she exhales. _‘Shit_ —god, wait,’ her legs wrap tightly around Kara’s waist, holding her in place. 

Kara catches the tear sliding down her face with a soft, careful hand, strokes soothingly at her cheek in contrition. She dips her head to mouth delicately at her throat, her shoulders. ‘So beautiful taking me like this,’ Kara says sweetly, nosing into the curl of her ear. ‘Breathe for me, baby. Through your mouth. Are you okay?’

‘Yes,’ she nods after a breath, turns her head to press a flurry of little close-mouthed kisses to Kara’s tense arm in assurance; she shifts her hips back, spreads her knees a little wider, and closes her eyes briefly. ‘I just need a moment. Fuck, Kara, you’re _big._ And so—’ she exhales on a long, breathless note, ‘—fucking thick. Where did you even _get_ this?’ she chokes on a laugh, Kara’s hips jogging experimentally into her once, twice, the broad length of it dragging deeply inside her. 

‘You said you wanted to try something a little more—substantial,’ Kara smiles; she drops her head fully to rest on her shoulder, presses her cheek to the curve of her chest. Lena lets out another muted cry, grasps at her arms tightly in surprise when Kara slides a hand between their bodies to rub a fingertip against her in slow, tight circles. 

‘Okay,’ she says after a beat, reaching up to pull her face back up to hers. Their foreheads nudge together, and Kara noses at her cheek tenderly. ‘Okay, you can move now,’ she sighs into her mouth, holding her face against her own. ‘Please.’

Kara kisses her, then, far too softly and restrained, in contrast to the way her hips suddenly rise to drive into her—fast, and deep, and hard. Kara makes no move to quiet her past the mouth smothering her own—her mewling rising to a rhythmic, near-frantic pitch with every snap of Kara’s hips—even as she pulls back to peer closer at her face. 

‘You’re so beautiful like this, Lena,’ Kara whispers reverently; she licks at Lena’s lips, tasting salt from another stray tear. ‘So beautiful taking me like this. You want it like this, don’t you? Tell me,’ she coos, hitching the backs of Lena’s knees onto the crook of her arms and spreading her open farther. ‘Tell me how you want it.’

‘Just—like this,’ Lena groans, long and drawn-out. She turns her head to press her face into her pillow, clawing at the sheets beneath her. ‘Like _that—’_ she hisses, breathless with delight as Kara’s thrusts pick up in speed, in strength. ‘Want you like this, but deeper,’ she says pleadingly. 

‘Yeah,’ Kara nods absently, transfixed by the gape of Lena’s warm, slick-red cunt stretched tight around her length. ‘Yeah, okay,’ she cants forward suddenly, leaning over her and swallowing Lena’s sharp cry of surprise in an open-mouthed kiss.

It takes a fair bit of fumbling, but she manages to pull Lena further up and into her, grasping her by the backs of her thighs to hold her hips clean off the bed before pounding into her in earnest. ‘Oh, my _god,’_ Lena whimpers into her ear, fingers scrabbling against her back frantically. ‘God, fuck, yes, _yes, Kara—_ don’t stop, don’t you fucking _stop.’_

Kara braces a hand against the headboard, fucking into her tight, wet warmth with relentless vigor. Lena screws her eyes closed, mouth hanging open in wanton abandon at the feel of her cock, her full, hard length, sliding into her at a near-reckless pace, Kara grunting lowly in her ear.

At this angle, Kara’s thick silicone head mouths at the tip of her cervix with every thrust, and it isn’t long before she’s grasping blindly at Kara’s hip to pull her even closer, her sharp, rhythmic cries rising in pitch. She comes suddenly with a soundless gasp, her breath stuttering in her throat, her chest, as she surrenders to wave after searing wave of pleasure.

Her walls tight, tight, tighten spasmodically around Kara’s girth, hard enough to give her pause, her pace stuttering, faltering in surprise when Lena’s legs come up to fix her in place, hips rolling weakly up into hers. ‘Oh, god, baby,’ she pants aloud, in spite of herself. ‘Oh, you came for me, didn’t you?’ Lena moans beneath her in response, soft and languid. 

It’s the look on Lena’s face—blissful, and sated, and intractably self-satisfied—that sends her over the edge, hips pumping into her urgently, straining deeply down and up, up into her, right at the base, before burying herself to the hilt inside her. She groans her release, grunting softly as her thrusts bear her down into Lena, who embraces her tightly even as she all but collapses on top of her, thoroughly winded. 

‘I love you so much,’ Lena breathes into the top of her hair, fingers sifting gently, tenderly through her hair. 

Kara makes a small soft noise of utter contentment against her chest, sighing deeply before sinking bonelessly against her in full. ‘I love you, too,’ she says, more than a little breathlessly. ‘So, so, so much.’ 

Later, with the harness tossed carelessly onto the floor beside them, bodies tangled tightly together on top of their sheets, Kara buries a giggle against Lena’s stomach. ‘I won’t be able to look Lois in the eye for an entire _year,’_ she snorts, turning her head to peer up at her. ‘If you didn’t wake them up the first time, there’s no way we didn’t the second time around.’ 

‘I mean, I don’t know, she popped a Benadryl before they went up. Something about her allergies acting up,’ Lena smiles, drawing wide, curling whorls against the slope of Kara’s neck. ‘Then again, she probably knew you’d been dying to rail me since we got here, so that also might’ve just been a contingency in hindsight.’ She stifles a yelp when Kara nips none-too-gently at her hip in reproach. ‘Wait ‘til I ride you,’ she smirks at the blush that rises in Kara’s face. ‘If that doesn’t wake the entire neighborhood up, I don’t know what will.’ 

‘Naughty,’ Kara laughs, pinching her thigh lightly, right above where she’d sucked a remarkably purple bruise into existence earlier. ‘Bold of you to assume she isn’t standing outside the door right now, debating how best to break the door down and throw us both out.’

She digs her toes into Kara’s side, relishing the ticklish little bark it draws out of her. ‘Ugh, don’t,’ she groans, threading both hands back in Kara’s thick curls and resuming her slow, soothing scratches. ‘The last thing I need is a visual. You’re killing my post-coital high.’ She closes her thighs around Kara’s head reflexively when she ducks down to press teasing close-lipped kisses to her soft nub, spreading her open, still-damp and pink, with her fingers. ‘Kara, give me a minute,’ she whines, pushing playfully against her head. ‘I’m still too sensitive.’ 

‘I’m only cleaning up. I’ve made a mess,’ Kara hums innocently, flicking her tongue out in languid little kitten licks once, twice, before scooting back up and pressing her cheek back to her stomach with a soft blissful sigh. She reaches up to tangle her fingers with Lena’s, brings their hands down to her lips to kiss them. 

Outside, a soft flurry begins to fall, backlit against the warm, orange glow of the lamplight. She glances out the window for a beat, watching it coming down in slow, swirling eddies, before glancing back down at Kara humming quietly in her lap, the gentle patter of her pulse along her throat thrumming against her stomach. 

Her own heart leaps to meet it, and the sheer mundanity of it, of them, in the moment, she knows, is nothing inexplicable, nothing surreal; but all the same, a sudden, overwhelming burst of feeling seizes her at the sight of Kara, here, curled so tightly, so contentedly around her; rises thick in her throat with a surge of gratitude and a powerful, tidal upwelling of love that leaves her breathless in its intensity. 

Her whole world, she thinks, smiling tenderly, right in her arms. 

‘What are you thinking about?’ Lena asks quietly, thumbing at the curve of Kara’s cheek and the line of her jaw in a long, sweeping circuit. 

Kara leans up to kiss her palm before burrowing further down against her, stroking lovingly at her hip. ‘You,’ she says, fondly. ‘You, and,’ she pauses, turns her head to press her ear to the soft swell of her belly with a faux-gasp, as if straining to hear her undulations, oblivious to the way Lena suddenly stills beneath her. ‘All the poor lobster newburg you tried to kidnap in secret with Clark’s after-dinner digestifs.’ She pretends to wipe her tears with a delicate flick of her hand, ‘Sometimes, I can still hear their little voices.’

She should laugh, she knows, but her heart kicks up with a jolt, thunders anew in her chest with a vengeance. Kara seems to register her diffidence at last, shifts to peer up at her in concern. ‘I was joking,’ she says self-consciously, slides down to nuzzle her cheek back against her. ‘That wasn’t anything against the way you eat, sweet,’ she says worriedly. ‘You know I would never.’

‘No, I know,’ Lena says, and then, to her utter mortification, a tear slides down her face—and then another, and another, until Kara’s leaning over her in alarm, looking horrified and perilously close to tears herself, wiping at her face gently with a hand. 

‘Oh, no,’ Kara whispers concernedly, stroking at her cheek with her fingers. She touches their foreheads together. ‘Oh, no, my love. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, what’s wrong?’ 

Lena pulls her closer, clutching at her shoulders, her back. ‘Nothing,’ she says truthfully, insistently, because there isn’t anything—beyond everything she was simply _feeling._ ‘Nothing, you didn’t do anything wrong, Kara, I promise. I promise.’ 

Kara fusses and hovers, deeply perturbed, until she’s coaxed into settling back down against her belly, peering up at her with fretful eyes while Lena brushes her fair hair back from her face. ‘What is it, Lena?’ she says, taking one of her hands in her own and pressing her lips to it. ‘Is it Lucius?’ she murmurs, clasping their fingers together; and then, in a decidedly smaller, more timid sort of tone: ‘Is it us?’

‘No, Kara,’ Lena says firmly, quickly, upset at the very thought, and Kara sags back down in relief. ‘No, never. I—’ she swallows, and her free hand stills in Kara’s hair. Another tear falls, stubborn as anything, down her face, and Kara catches the glistening trail of it with a fingertip gently, patiently.

‘I was thinking,’ she tries again, after a shaky little breath, and it's the way Kara curls further into her, then, for comfort, cheek pressed warmly to her bare stomach, that galvanizes her in full. She draws the back of her hand across Kara’s cheek, smiling so widely, now, that Kara finds herself returning it timidly, hopefully. 

‘I was thinking, how, it might take a few more weeks before you can really hear them both like that from down there,’ she traces the shell of Kara’s ear slowly, tugs the soft lobe of it between thumb and finger once, twice. ‘But we can, already, if you want to,’ she whispers, smiling hard enough to crinkle the corners of her eyes; hard enough to coax a belated tear into slipping down her cheek. ‘With a Doppler.’

Time seems to condense and compress into itself, winking out like a light. 

The silence draws on, slow, and thick, and strand-like, for what feels, surely—Lena thinks, heart hammering—like an infinity in itself. Her breathing slows to match it—a fading exhalation tightening in stasis. 

But, then, outside, the soft amber-colored motes that had been suspended mid fall in a heartbeat, seemingly, by the sheer gravity of her confession, resume their swirling down-drift: Kara lifts her head off her slowly, a great, glowing light building, spilling from her bright, searching eyes. 

It’s the wonder on her face—impossibly radiant in its awe; a thing of beauty so profound she feels compelled to preserve it—that makes Lena’s heart, she’s sure, quite literally stutter.

She curls her hand around Kara’s chin, gentle, and careful, and trembling. ‘Say something,’ Lena laughs, a little too breathless, a little too conscious. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

And, then, in a blink—the spell breaks.

Sound and color come rushing back, flooding to fill the spaces between them swiftly, thrillingly, in a burst of moments Lena wishes she had the forethought to capture for posterity: Kara bursting into delighted laughter, and then bursting into tears in the same moment, and then crying earnestly, truly, unabashedly, a hand clapped to her mouth; her other hand reaching, tentatively at first, and then surely, to stroke the soft swell of Lena’s stomach with tender reverence; and then reaching, with both hands, to pull Lena off the bed with inordinate strength, and into her arms. ‘You’re sure?’ she whispers into her hair, and Lena nods shakily, threading her fingers through hers. 

‘Yours,’ she says softly, ‘all two of them,’ and Kara’s face crumples anew in rapturous excitement. 

_‘Ours,’_ Kara manages wondrously in between sobs. ‘Oh, god. Oh—I love you, Lena. I love you, so much.’ She shifts her hold, lifting her carefully until Lena settles sidelong on her lap. 

They watch, together, as she lays a warm hand on her stomach, Lena folding her own on top of hers, envisioning the wonder and feel of a flutter, there, in a few more weeks. ‘And I love _you,’_ Kara says, bottom lip wobbling. ‘I love you both already, so much.’

And then she’s burying her face back into Lena’s shoulder to cry a little more, snorting at her own volatility. ‘Oh, what’ll they think of me,’ she mutters, horrified. ‘And I’ve— _we’ve_ made such a - a racket! But they didn’t—they couldn’t hear any of that earlier, right? Oh, what am I—? Oh, this is _insane,’_ she hiccups, and Lena clutches at her back almost desperately, laughing into her hair, nose pressed to her temple. 

‘This _is_ crazy,’Lena laugh-cries, wiping at her eyes with steady hands, no longer trembling. She clasps both of Kara’s hands tightly in her own, mindful of the delicate filigree chain on their wrists meeting, chafing briefly, and knocks their foreheads gently together. Her free hand comes up to rub soothingly at her belly, imagines bundling them tightly in between their embrace. ‘Isn’t this crazy?’ she whispers down at them both. 

Kara’s mouth is warm when she kisses her, then, and the sense-memory of their first—the heat of it, and the salt-damp—draws a smile out of her that she knows Kara must feel, tugging at the corners of her own, because she presses in a little harder. 

But, Kara kisses her just the once, like their first—a soft, gentle, delicate thing, close-lipped and careful. Her mouth parts from hers reluctantly, still clinging, lingering, and she feels it in full, now, touching hers everywhere: Kara smiling, and smiling, and smiling, quite unable to stop. 

‘It’s perfect,’ Kara says, nosing at her cheek softly. ‘Absolutely perfect.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are existing aphorisms on kismet and predestination, and everything coming full circle in conclusion, but—you know, at this point, maybe Shania Twain really did [say it best](https://youtu.be/5uwhcy8OCi8?t=14) lmao.
> 
> you can _still_ track updates, moodboards, queries, and more on tumblr on the [#hte au verse tag!](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/tagged/hte-au-verse)
> 
> i really can’t thank you lot enough for everything, thank you for being so lovely. we’ll see each other again soon, but until then, please feel free to:
> 
> \- Come and say hi on [tumblr](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/), or on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/subtleanarchist) or, better yet, 
> 
> \- [Drop a prompt! ](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/ask)and, then, if you so please:
> 
> \- Let me know what you thought of this one!
> 
> Have a great week ahead! x

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you thought! and then come say hello and drop me a line on [tumblr](https://subtleanarchist.tumblr.com/), or on [twitter.](https://twitter.com/subtleanarchist) x


End file.
